Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists

This article examines the borderlands between transgender MTF (male‐to‐female) and gay male communities in Latina/o Miami through an analysis of the participation of Latinas in the Transsexual Action Organization (TAO). Previous research suggests that Cuban and Cuban American gay male culture have historically been associated with gender transgressive behaviour and identity. Because of this, it is often unclear how to distinguish between what is gay male/homosexual expression and transgender expression. If outward gender manifestations that we now call ‘transgender’ were understood in other historical and cultural contexts as ‘homosexual’, how do we label those manifestations today? By labelling them as homosexual are we simply reinscribing the marginalisation of transgender individuals? On the other hand, by labelling them as transgender are we imposing a contemporary category and therefore performing another kind of intellectual violence? In order to address these questions, I analyse a Latino/a organisation that explicitly labelled itself ‘transsexual’. TAO was an early transsexual rights organisation founded in 1970 by Angela Douglas in Los Angeles which moved to Miami Beach, Florida in 1972. Drawing on the organisation's publications, Moonshadow and Mirage Magazine (1972–75), and Douglas's self‐published autobiographical texts, Triple Jeopardy: The Autobiography of Angela Lynn Douglas (1983) and Hollywood's Obsession (1992), I analyse the rarely discussed participation of Latinas in the organisation.     

Small preys and plant exploitation by late pleistocene hunter–gatherers. A case study from the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula

The aim of this paper is to explain the subsistence strategies of late hunter–gatherers from the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula on the basis of zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical records. The study is based on the Molí del Salt archaeological site which has yielded an Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sequence. Each of the disciplines shows us a various type of assemblage to approach the same problem. Archaeobotanical materials, including charcoal and seeds provide data on the strategies related to firewood gathering and vegetal food supply, which was a basic subsistence resource for these groups. The archaeobotanical assemblage is mainly formed by conifers, but other species related to edible plants are also important. Bone assemblage, mainly formed by Oryctolagus cuniculus, show how hunting and meat processing is highly related. The environmental constraints as well as mobility are discussed in order to achieve an ampler knowledge on human activities.     

La Quintrala's Confessions: The Contesting of Female Agency and Indigeneity in Two Popular Chilean Visual Narratives

Doña Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer, known as ‘La Quintrala,’ a seventeenth-century aristocratic woman of mixed ancestry accused of torture, witchcraft, and murder, has persisted as a recurring figure in the Chilean imaginary. While literary representations of this figure have been well explored, this article contributes an examination of two visual narratives, paying particular attention to the manner in which genre and context influence the repurposing of this violent woman: the 1986 teleserie La Quintrala, produced by Chile's state-owned television station (TVN), and the Chilean newspaper Las últimas noticias's 2008 comic ‘La Quintrala y el Cristo de Mayo.’ The teleserie, a product of the Pinochet era, positions her as an antithesis to the ideal Chilean woman, simultaneously denying her agency and condemning her. The comic echoes the rhetoric of the Concertación governments as it prominently links La Quintrala's downfall and redemption to the genesis of modern Chile at the cost of her distinctive racial and gendered characteristics. Ultimately, each work employs the structure of confession to recall her crimes while rejecting the female agency and racially mixed heritage La Quintrala represents.     

Phylogeography of einkorn landraces in the Mediterranean basin and Central Europe: population structure and cultivation history

Einkorn (Triticum monococcum L.) was one of the first cereals to be domesticated in the Old World ca. 10,000 years ago and to spread towards Europe and North Africa. Its cultivation declined before the Iron Age and it remains today only as a relic crop in remote areas. To investigate if the geographic distribution of genetic diversity in modern einkorn landrace accessions could be informative about the movement of this crop during prehistory, we genotyped 50 accessions of einkorn from Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Using nuclear and chloroplast microsatellites and clustering methods, we detected two main gene pools in einkorn. The distribution of these lineages revealed differences between accessions from Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe and the Near East and suggests different regional dynamics in the spread of this crop.     

Repertoires of Family Life and the Anchoring of Afghan Trading Networks in Ukraine

This article examines the “repertories” of family life of men of Afghan background in Odessa, Ukraine. It focuses on these men's intimate relationships with “local women” and challenges the notion that such unions merely offer a form of emotional escape for migrants or refugees far from home. Instead, we advance two arguments: first, that Afghan men in Ukraine form part of a complex transnational trading network, rather than a bounded group of refugees or migrants; second, that the cross-community relationships between Afghan men and “local women” play a significant role in the spatial anchoring and commercial fortunes of transnational Afghan traders in Ukraine. In the analysis of our ethnographic data, we consider the importance of the aftermath of the Cold War in shaping the diverse forms of family life within these trading networks.     

British Merchants in New Markets: The Case of Wylie and Hancock in Brazil and the River Plate,c. 1808–19

In 1808, after the Portuguese royal family was forced to leave Portugal and move to Brazil, Brazilian ports were opened to British merchant houses, which were quick to open offices in the likes of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. By 1810 there were probably over 200 British merchant houses operating in Brazil, but we know very little about them because most of their historical records have not survived. In addition, scholars have assumed that, on account of the dominant British economic power, the establishment of new mercantile houses in South America c. 1808–19 was an easy task. This assumption is challenged in this paper, which sheds new light on the activities of one of these British merchant houses, making use of a recently discovered business collection concerned with the activities of Wylie & Hancock, a Scottish house which operated in Brazil and the River Plate from 1808 to 1819. These papers also provide a unique insight into neglected topics such as: the nature of managerial mercantile organisations; what the economic actors at the time actually did and thought; and how strategic and tactical choices were reached.