Abstract: This essay analyzes the film Brujería (2023), directed by Christopher Murray. Set in 19th-century Chiloé —an island in southern Chile— the story follows Rosa, a young Huilliche girl who seeks justice after her father is murdered by a German settler. When the local authorities refuse to help her, she turns to La Recta Provincia , an Indigenous organization of sorcerers who use magic to administer justice. Drawing on the historical background of this group, decolonial theory, and Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this article argues that magic in the film constitutes a heterotopic space that disrupts colonial logic and enables alternative ways of being and knowing. Divided into three parts, this work explores: (1) magic as epistemology, which challenges Western paradigms and generates alternative modes of knowledge; (2) magic as justice, which explores the use of magic in the Indigenous legal system; and (3) magic as territory, where physical and symbolic places resist the colonial hierarchies and mechanisms of domination. As a cinematic heterotopia, Brujería constructs a counter-archive that confronts the erasure of Indigenous cosmologies and communities imposed by colonial systems.

Abstract: In 1528, a book compiling maps of all the known islands of the world was printed in Venice. The isolario, or island-book, was a venerable genre in the Mediterranean, but Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario offered a new twist on the old format because it featured American islands. Because it was published during a period in which cartographic ideas about the New World were still taking shape, the island-book demonstrates some of the ways in which Europe imagined the New World during the early decades of the sixteenth century. Most scholarship on the American islands in Bordone’s book have focused on one map of Tenochtitlan. In contrast, this essay turns to the book’s multiple maps of Caribbean islands, which were the initial site of European expansion in the Americas. This essay argues that, by presenting the Americas exclusively through its islands, Bordone’s Isolario was formative in its emphasis on the Caribbean, which in turn influenced subsequent European approaches to the region in the sixteenth century.

Abstract: El montaje universitario Noche tan linda, dirigido por Martín Balmaceda, es una experiencia escénica y pedagógica que combina teoría y práctica para cuestionar los estereotipos patriarcales y homofóbicos en la obra del dramaturgo venezolano Pablo García Gámez. Utilizando metodologías como la Dramaturgia del Espacio, Viewpoints y la técnica de Strasberg, el proyecto redefine el espacio escénico como un lenguaje independiente que intensifica tensiones emocionales y conflictos identitarios, reafirmando el teatro como una herramienta de cambio social. La historia de la obra presenta al personaje José Macario/Camelia Margarita, ambientada en Venezuela en los años ochenta. Evidencia la vulnerabilidad de las personas trans frente a la violencia institucional y la exclusión social. Desde una perspectiva crítica basada en marcos teóricos contemporáneos (Butler, Dubatti, Wayar), la puesta en escena convierte el cuerpo trans en una declaración política que desafía las normas convencionales sobre género y sexualidad. Noche tan linda se consolida como un referente pedagógico y estético que promueve la inclusión, la dignidad y la diversidad en el teatro contemporáneo.

Abstract: This essay traces the path from Carlos Menem’s ideological formulations to their discursive and practical representations. During the 1990s, Menemism became the dominant ideology and political practice in Argentina, which reformulated Peronism in light of neoliberal economic policies. Such a path from an ideological spectrum to a discursive and practical dimension delivered a novel experience in the history of Argentina: The emergence of neoliberal populism. In this regard, a set of inquiries arises: How did the process of creation of Menemism stimulate the emergence of an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of Argentina, known as neoliberal populism? How did Carlos Menem reformulate Peronism under the neoliberal economic period? How did Menemism –an antithetical project to Peronist society– coexist with Peronism?

Abstract: This study, the first of its kind, closely examines Reinaldo Arenas’s original Antes que anochezca manuscript, a text long shrouded in mystery; in the process, it reveals surprising redactions that were not included in some of the published versions of the autobiography. It provides contextualization and analysis of the collective process of both written and oral composition of Antes , as well as the editorial process carried out by Arenas and his “literary team” posthumously. The author also explores a multitude of relevant adjacent materials, in addition to a second Antes manuscript, edited by Dolores Koch.

Reviewed by: The Comitán Valley: Sculpture and Identity on the Maya Frontier by Caitlin C. Early Thomas Guderjan The Comitán Valley: Sculpture and Identity on the Maya Frontier. By Caitlin C. Early. Austin, University of Texas Press, 2023, p. 211, $60.00. The Comitán Valley has seen significant research by archaeologists and art historians for many decades. Despite this field work, there has been insufficient contextualization, and this volume is a very welcome step in the direction of understanding the ancient Maya of the area in a clearer and broader context. Caitlin Early offers us a perspective of the ancient political dynamics of the valley through a tight volume that opens with a chapter that focuses on the valley as a frontier district of the ancient Maya, followed by four chapters on the art and iconography of the region's major archaeological sites (Tenam Rosario, Tenam Puente, Chinkultic, and Quen Santo). The volume concludes with a chapter on the Postclassic period in the valley and a conclusion dealing with frontiers and identity. As an archaeologist who also works in a different Maya frontier and boundary context, I found the discussion of the Comitán Valley to be surprisingly useful and insightful. Early opened several interpretive doors in her discussion, especially given that she is still a young scholar. I recall a review of a volume by one of my mentors at the same stage of his career in which the reviewer anticipated that the author would make major contributions throughout his later career. He did and I anticipate the same for Caitlin Early. Chapter 1, "The Edge of The Maya World," builds a contextual framework for this volume, drawing on sources as diverse as mid-20th century non-professional publications to the archaeological field work and recent interpretive works. Early's approach to understanding frontier zones is, again, refreshing and informative. I anticipate citing her work in my own. I do have a bone to pick, not with the author specifically, but more broadly with art historians working in the Maya area. Early, like many others, focuses on the public art of Maya centers without a contextualizing discussion of what a Maya center is. Granted, the fieldwork required to determine whether Maya centers of public architecture are centers of populous cities or isolated outposts, for example, has not been done in the Comitán Valley and has traditionally been complex, labor-intensive, and financially costly to undertake. While that is rapidly changing in the past decade due to the capability of LiDAR to quickly (but expensively) create high resolution models of landscape around Maya centers, such work has not yet been done in the valley. Nevertheless, I would strongly welcome a discussion of what nodes of public architecture represent in the framework of Classic Maya society. The next four chapters deal with royal art at the major known sites. This art was clearly for public consumption and aggrandized ruling royal families and individuals as well as depicted captive leaders of other poli-ties. While this is not as complete of a picture as we have of, say, Tikal and [End Page 307] Palenque, Early successfully demonstrates that the alliance and aggression were as much a part of Comitán life as at the larger, better-known sites. Her efforts will form a baseline for such research far into the future. Chapter 6, Transformation, documents how the Comitán Valley participated in the end of the Classic Maya way of life. The author discusses the knowable events at the end of the Classic period and the transformation into the Postclassic world. Lastly, in the concluding chapter, Early returns to the theme of frontier and how regional political integration may have shaped perspectives in the valley. [End Page 308] Thomas Guderjan Department of Social Sciences University of Texas at Tyler Copyright © 2024 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies

Reviewed by: Digital Humanities in Latin America ed. by Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Edgar Gómez-Cruz Digital Humanities in Latin America. By Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez (eds.). Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020, p. 318, $28.00. Digital Humanities in Latin America is a thought-provoking and comprehensive exploration of the dynamic relationship between technology and the humanities within the diverse and vibrant context of Latin America. Edited by Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez, this book assembles a collection of essays that illuminate the existing and potential connections between Digital Humanities (DH) and Latin American Studies, offering a diverse and multifaceted perspective on how digital technologies are being leveraged in the region. The book is thoughtfully organized into four main sections: "Digital Nations," "Transnational Networks," "Digital Aesthetics and Practices," and "Interviews." This structure enables readers to dive deep into the theoretical underpinnings of digital humanities in Latin America while also exploring studies that are shaping the field. The editors have done a commendable job in curating a diverse set of contributions, providing readers with exposure to a wide array of topics, methodologies, and viewpoints. A standout feature of this book is its commitment to bridging the gap between theoretical discussions and practical projects, all while examining the sociotechnical imaginaries present in the region. The first section, "Digital Nations," delves into how technology is imagined on a national level but enacted by their citizens. Drawing examples from countries like Cuba, nation-branding projects in different countries of the region, or the implementation of international projects such as the One Laptop per Child computer in Paraguay, this first section shows the tensions between imagined uses of technology, and their actual implementation. In the second section, "Transnational Networks," the book explores how different groups, including Latino/as in the US, Afrolatino/as, and local members of global organizations like Anonymous, have harnessed digital technologies to transcend state boundaries. These chapters reflect on broader issues such as participation, inclusion, race, and justice, providing valuable insights into the intersection of technology and society in Latin America, and offering some fruitful clues of the possibilities of a regional network. The third section, "Digital Aesthetics and Practices," showcases various initiatives, organizations, and individuals that are actively shaping a unique Latin American digital culture. From Cuban documentaries and Ecuadorian YouTube shows to Mexican artivists, these chapters highlight the diverse and nuanced ways digital technologies are being used for creative expression, cultural projects, and political activism, providing clear examples of the tensions and opportunities presented in the first two chapters. [End Page 175] In addition to scholarly contributions, the fourth section presents interviews with prominent figures in the field of Digital Humanities in Latin America. These conversations with leaders like Gimena del Rio Grande in Argentina, Ana Ligia Silva Medeiros in Brazil, and Isabel Galina Russell in Mexico offer valuable insights into the challenges, opportunities, and exciting projects taking place in the region. The book ends with a coda by the editors that both positions the chapters within a broader discussion about the region, opening up possibilities for a future agenda that engages with the DH in the Anglo-European world without renouncing itself to the epistemic and sociohistorical characteristics of a diverse region that shares many commonalities like Latin America. This is precisely one of the book's strengths: its focus on scholars and thinkers from Latin America, providing an alternative scholarly and cultural genealogy that reflects the region's unique realities. It engages with the field's development in the Global North while also highlighting power dynamics, inequality, participation, and access—crucial elements often overlooked in discussions of Digital Humanities in other regions but key to understand Latin America. However, as with any collection of essays, the quality and relevance of individual chapters may vary, depending on the reader's specific interests within the field of digital humanities. Nevertheless, the editors have skillfully curated a diverse range of perspectives, ensuring that there is something for everyone in this volume. In summary, Digital Humanities in Latin America significantly enriches the discourse on digital humanities and digital cultures...

Reviewed by: Against Abstraction: Notes from an Ex-Latin Americanist by Alberto Moreiras Elsa Costa Against Abstraction: Notes from an Ex-Latin Americanist. By Alberto Moreiras. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020, p. 248, $45.00 A self-translated collection of essays and interviews, Alberto Moreiras's Against Abstraction was originally published in Spanish under the title Marranismo e inscripción, o el abandono de la conciencia desdichada (Madrid: Escolar y Mayo, 2016). The "marrano-ism" of the title refers to the marranos of early modern Iberia, Catholic converts from Judaism or their descendants accused of practicing the old religion in secret. The word carries the additional meaning of "swine." In a footnote, Moreiras insists that he is not committing an "appropriation" of the "tragic history of a specific group of people" but rather pledging "radical solidarity" with a group of people excluded from the political and therefore capable of "unfettered thought" (211). The final claim is debatable and romanticized, but Moreiras's ethos of "refus[al] to ontologize the political, even in the name of the subaltern" (215) is hardly unsympathetic. Moreiras castigates other Latin Americanists, frequently John Beverley in the context of his leftist commitments and Walter Mignolo in the context of his neo-indigenism, for recklessly succumbing to the ontologizing temptation. He places both these nemeses (or bugbears) in a larger tradition of Latin American indigenism which was in fact a "creolism" "structurally exclusionary" of people of color of flesh and blood. While Moreiras's thoroughgoing paranoia sometimes causes excesses of generalization, it would be difficult to deny the existence of such a pseudo-indigenist tradition, alive in the present, if increasingly criticized with the globalization of racial discourse, and originating in the so-called "dispute of the New World." Often paranoia gets the better of Moreiras. Much of the first half of Against Abstraction is consumed in a litany of tendentious and petty resentments, from "goddamned racist" American scholars who complained about the food at a conference in Galicia to the critics who called The Exhaustion of Difference "demonic and nihilist," among other accusations of male chauvinism and deracinated postmodernism, a "boring" female rival, "ego Latin Americanists," rumors of student seduction (vehemently denied), Beverley, Mignolo, a succession of conspiracies culminating in Moreiras's departure from Duke, and so on and on and on. Moreiras is careful to avoid claiming martyr status, despite many dubious self-identifications, from the "marrano" label to the Christlike and endlessly betrayed marshal of Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952) and the victim protagonist of Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid (2010), who finally avenges herself on her tormentors with a theatrical public suicide. Still, for someone who does not hesitate to call himself "Plato to the Sophists," Moreiras is not above sophistry. A Spaniard of European descent, he cheapens his astute condemnations of the creole pseudo-indigenists when he takes refuge in some North Americans' facility for conflating whiteness with [End Page 455] Protestantism, responding directly to accusations of antifeminism by invoking his own supposed exclusion from whiteness. Elsewhere, Moreiras even takes as a point of departure the categorization of Spaniards by Anglo-American chauvinists as neither white nor nonwhite, christening this ambiguity an abjection, a third space, and so on: there is little sympathy for the Latin Americans of color excluded by creolism here. Unsurprisingly, Moreiras frequently expresses remorse at having become a Latin Americanist at all. Even setting aside his difficulties with the term, the recent evolution of the field, his peers, the problematic roots of the discipline, dependency on U.S. state power, etc., Moreiras admits that he has never been at home in the corpus of Latin American literature. His contempt for the white Latin Americans who have hidden ongoing power relations under the cloak of indigenism is coherent, but it has its roots less in a yearning to promote Black and Indigenous Latin American voices than in a fundamental comfort with European matters and corresponding discomfort with those of colonials of any color. And so the final chapters of Against Abstraction deal with contemporary Spanish authors. These are compelling, reasoned analyses, with a particularly good reflection on character and destiny in Javier Marías and Javier...