Political Historietas and Graphic Humor in Argentina

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Vazquez
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
English Word ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Political Humor ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
Economic Elite ◽  
The 1960S

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. The Spanish word “historietas,” like the English word “comics,” refers to a broad and heterogeneous body of work. A comic strip, a comic series, and a graphic novel are obviously not the same thing. One term can hide genres as diverse as gag cartoons, caricatures, illustrations, figurative narration, and narrative figuration. While comic strips and historietas often share a metonymic perspective, they represent two distinct practices. Comic strips published in newspapers and magazines are part of a hybrid genre similar to cartoons and historietas. Comic strips and cartoons both feature stand-alone stories. Comic strips and historietas both present their plots in a sequential graphic narrative. Historietas differ from comic strips and cartoons by appearing in adventure magazines, graphic novels, and serials that vary in content and publication format, each adhering to its own production conditions and genre rules. Graphic humor in Argentina has historically been tied to the political and economic elite. Even so, graphic humorists were able to surreptitiously convey subversive messages through their drawings and words. To work in the professional print industry has long been defined as having one foot in media business and the other in public interest. Due to the types of publications featuring historietas, their circulation, and their readership, historieta artists (historietistas) enjoyed a comparatively greater degree of autonomy in communicating social and political criticism. For graphic humor, its comedy or realism is connected to the type of commentary that appears in the opinion page of the daily news. Such is the case with magazines like Tía Vicenta, Humor Registrado, Satiricón, and Hortensia. The central characteristics of political humor link a historieta to the social and cultural conventions of its time. Graphic humor can be read in light of the ways it is unavoidably intertextual and metacommunicational, conditioned by existing discourse. Starting in the 1960s, realist and adventure historietas cultivated stylistic voics in tune with emerging forms of reflexive irony and the historieta’s unique visual properties. Playful experimentation in the textual and graphic dimensions of the historieta resulted in strongly political tales with elements of novelty and improvisation. Historietas written by Héctor Oesterheld and drawn by Alberto Breccia are paradigmatic of this tension between historietas and politics. Their narrative and aesthetic innovations highlight how historietas can be organized as ideological discourse, intervening alongside popular culture in the debates and dilemmas of the time.

Digital Resources: The DeGolyer Library

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne E. Peterson ◽  
Cindy Boeke
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
School Students ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Digital Collections ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
Digital Collection ◽  
Manuscript Collections

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. Collections at Southern Methodist University's DeGolyer Library focus on the U.S. West, the Spanish borderlands, transportation, business history, and much more. The DeGolyer has over 900,000 photographs and is especially rich in Mexican photography. With more than 120 Mexican accessions, mostly from the period ca. 1865–1930, the DeGolyer has one of the most comprehensive photographic collections in the country totaling more than 8,500 photographs and 3,000 negatives. Additional Mexican accessions include portraits, manuscript collections of viceroyalty documents (some signed by Spanish kings), land grants, applications for nobility, documents related to the Catholic Church and to the emperors Iturbide and Maximilian, materials from the Mexican War and Texas Revolution, early maps, currency, and rare books. A country of great beauty and geographical diversity, Mexico has attracted a variety of photographers from abroad as well as regional image-makers. More than thirty photographers are represented at the DeGolyer. Subjects include landscapes, native peoples, railroads, mining, agriculture, tourist views, and the Mexican 1910 Centennial and Mexican Revolution. Collections at the DeGolyer also illustrate the regime of President Porfirio Díaz (r. 1876–1910) and the eventual struggle for power between the old guard and working-class people leading to the revolution. The Mexican Revolution was a drawn out, violent, and bloody affair, and the DeGolyer has important collections relating to the conflict. The Norwick Center for Digital Services (nCDS), a unit of Southern Methodist University’s Central University Libraries (CUL), is working with the DeGolyer Library to put an increasing number of the Mexican collections online. The DeGolyer Library’s digitized Mexican accessions are available in the "Mexico: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints" digital collection, which is part of the CUL Digital Collections website. The nCDS and the DeGolyer Library have documented the digital collection’s use in a variety of publications, exhibits, and educational applications. The primary resources available in "Mexico: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints" are widely used throughout Mexico by Mexican academic researchers, school students, and the general public. The digital collection is also utilized in many other countries by scholars and people who want to learn more about Mexico’s rich cultural heritage and tumultuous past. The nCDS and the DeGolyer Library are continuing to augment this popular digital resource, one that is growing use for the study of Mexican history.

Digital Resources: The Mexican Digital Library, BDMx (Mexican National Council for Culture and the Arts)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Martínez Baracs
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
National Council ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
Less Is More ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Photography Collections

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. The Biblioteca Digital Mexicana (BDMx) provides access—for the average user as well as for students and scholars—to significant historical materials, "unpublished or very rare," as was said in the second half of the nineteenth century, the golden age of Mexican historiography. The BDMx is not concerned with documents that have a principally symbolic value (such as autographs or decrees about the founding of cities); rather, it deals with those with high cultural density, whose value is not diminished upon their first reading. Finally, the BDMx contains only materials that are not already easily found online, which, unfortunately, excludes a great number of very valuable works. This initiative was founded and directed with the support of a directorial council comprised of the directors of four important Mexican institutions connected to Mexican history and culture: the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia (BNAH), the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México (CEHM-Carso), and the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Conaculta). With this institutional backing, the BDMx has been able to add eight additional archives and libraries, and it continues to grow. The AGN houses most national historical archives; the BNAH holds the main Mesoamerican Codices collection of the country, and its Colección Antigua has long been appreciated by scholars, with holdings such as the Franciscan Archives collection; CEHM-Carso is a private library that has acquired unique archival collections; Conaculta is our Ministry of Culture and, as such, has under its wing many regional museums, important photography collections, and more. The BDMx also works closely with the Universidad Iberoamericana's Biblioteca Francisco Xavier Clavijero, a private library that holds the Porfirio Díaz Archives and much more. And the Mapoteca Manuel Orozco y Berra, founded in the nineteenth century, holds a trove of historical maps. The BDMx chooses the documents by common agreement with the curators of these collections. It looks for variety in the types of documents and supportive materials (books, other publications, manuscripts, pictography, photography, lithography, and so on). The themes are self-selected, due to their own worth and because they might mark an important anniversary or a centennial. Up to the present, some of the principal selections have been Mesoamerican codices, the unpublished oeuvre of Guillén de Lampart, ancient maps and plans, and the work of Rodrigo de Vivero. Each item is accompanied by a historiographical introduction that aims to be up to date and relevant. The user is distracted with nothing other than the presentation of the documents, in a clean and friendly format. And the worth of the project lies in the quality of the documents. This is an example where less is more.

Digital Resources: The Handbook of Latin American Studies

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine D. McCann ◽  
Tracy North
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Latin American Studies ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
Atlantic Studies ◽  
History Of

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. The Handbook of Latin American Studies is a selective annotated bibliography of works about Latin America. Continuously published since 1936, the Handbook has been compiled and edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress for seventy-five years. Published works in multiple languages are selected for inclusion in the Handbook by a cadre of contributing editors, actively working scholars who provide a service to the field by annotating works of lasting scholarly value and writing bibliographical essays noting major trends, changes, and gaps in existing research. In 1995, the Hispanic Division launched the website HLAS Online, providing access to a database of more than 340,000 annotated citations. The ability to search across more than 50 volumes of the Handbook with a single query gave researchers unprecedented access to years of scholarship on Latin America. In 2000, HLAS Web, a new search interface with more robust functionality, was launched. The two sites link researchers worldwide to a vast body of selected resources on Latin America. The Handbook itself has become a record of the history of the field of Latin American studies and an indicator of changing trends in the field. With digital access to Handbook citations of books, articles, and more, scholars are able not only to identify specific works of interest, but also to follow the rise of new areas of study, such as women’s studies, cultural history, environmental history, and Atlantic studies, among others.

Yellow Fever in the Caribbean

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariola Espinosa
Keyword(s):  
Full Article ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Latin American ◽  
High Mortality ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Single Episode ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The Caribbean

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. Yellow fever was one of the most dreaded diseases in the Caribbean region from its first appearance in the 1650s until the confirmation of its spread via the bites of infected mosquitos in 1900. Fear of the disease resulted from not just its high mortality rate, but also the horrifying manner in which it killed its victims: after several days of fever, chills, and body aches, the skin and eyes of those who were most seriously infected would turn yellow as their livers failed, they would bleed from the eyes and nose, and they would succumb to the vomiting of coagulated blood. Because the virus caused only mild symptoms in children and a single episode confers lifetime immunity, the disease did not heavily impact natives of the region. Instead, it was newcomers in the Caribbean who suffered the worst ravages.

The Saamaka Maroons of Suriname

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Price ◽  
Sally Price
Keyword(s):  
Full Article ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin American ◽  
French Guiana ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
The State ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Amazonian Rainforest

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. Fifty years ago, we began wide-ranging anthropological and historical work with Saamaka Maroons, the descendants of slaves who had escaped from the plantations of coastal Suriname in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and established an independent society and culture deep in the Amazonian rainforest. Then a colony of the Netherlands, Suriname became an independent republic in 1975. Events of the 1980s and 1990s—most notably a civil war between the State and the Maroons and the subsequent decision by the State to exploit the timber and mineral riches of the Saamakas’ traditional territory—have led to wrenching changes for people who were once the masters of their forest realm. As the most visible and activist academic supporters of the Saamakas, the authors were barred from Suriname by the national government and, since 1986, have been condemned to continuing work in neighboring French Guiana (Guyane), where tens of thousands of Saamakas in exile have become part of a complex multi-ethnic society driven by strong assimilationist policies authored in Paris. During this same period, the authors have become increasingly involved in activism, assisting the Saamaka people in Suriname in their struggle to protect their territory, which has unfolded before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. What are the moral dilemmas posed by this activist work? What has it been like writing Saamaka ethnography and history from the excentric location of Guyane? How do we imagine the book that we will never get to write, about changes and continuities in Saamaka life over the past fifty years?

Ecological Science in Latin America and the Caribbean

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Raby
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The Caribbean

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. Fieldwork in Latin America and the Caribbean has played a major role in the development of the modern science of ecology––the study of organisms’ relationships with each other and the physical environment. Since the colonial era, natural historical knowledge grew and circulated through expeditions and naturalists’ encounters with indigenous and enslaved people’s environmental knowledge. Observations of the life histories, behavior, and geographical distribution of the regions’ species laid the groundwork for the emergence of ecology as a self-conscious discipline during the late 19th century. Major figures in the foundation of ecology were inspired by travel throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and especially by the large number and variety of species found in rainforests and other tropical areas. The growth of colonial and independent national scientific institutions––including botanical gardens, museums, and geographical surveys––also created important foundations for ecological research, although these were primarily oriented toward agricultural and economic improvement. As field stations specifically devoted to ecological research emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, long-term, place-based studies of living organisms became possible for the first time. Research at such institutions helped to shape key ecological concepts––including the ecological community, ecosystems, and species diversity––and contributed directly to the rise of the biodiversity ideal in conservation. Despite their historic importance, field studies in Latin America and the Caribbean remain significantly underrepresented in ecology today.

Independence in Latin America

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Adelman
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The Core ◽  
Socioeconomic Analysis ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Independence Movements ◽  
New Crop ◽  
Intellectual Climate

This article bridges the colonial and the national period in a discussion of the independence movements. This topic, part of foundational narratives in the region, once represented the core of Latin American history. The shift to structural and socioeconomic analysis after the 1960s led to a period neglect of a topic that came to be considered too Whiggish and celebratory or, at best, not particularly consequential. But a renewed interest in political history and, more recently, the expectation of several bicentenaries in 2010, have brought a new crop of studies of the emancipation process. By following historians' changing attitudes on the theme, the article also tells us much about the intellectual climate in Latin America during the last half century.

Politics are the Sport of the Student: How Social Media has Changed the Riot Dynamic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Duchaine
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Student Experiences ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Latin American Students

For engineering students in Colombia, law students in Mexico, and philosophy students in Brazil, scholarship took a backseat to political activism in the 1960s. This presentation examines why students were such a force within Latin American history during the period from 1958-1970. In 15 minutes, it provides an accessible, educational, and entertaining deconstruction of the origins of the Latin American student movement. I argue that this period represents the ‘tipping point’ of activism within Latin American Universities; one in which the sport of politics long practiced within institutions breached the walls of the ivory tower. In a quarter of an hour, the origins of this radicalism are presented:o Demographics (higher enrolment figures, diversifying student experiences, broadening academic curriculum into the humanities and social sciences)o Long-standing socio-cultural student respect (the position of students as ‘agents of change’, student co-governance of academic institutions)o Idealism (rejection of typical political process, ‘fetishization’ of counter-cultural’)all set against the backdrop of Cold War tensions. Organized against perceptions of government corruption, neo-liberalization and American interventionism, students protested, joined guerrilla groups, forced strikes, and – in the case of Mexico – were eventually massacred by the state. Latin American students broadened the definition of a university from a house of scholarship to a training ground for citizenry, with a directive to “provide leaders for nation-building.” The audience will be encouraged to ask questions and will leave with broader understandings of the role of students and universities in Latin America and beyond.

Digital Resources: The Essex Collection of Art from Latin America

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Harwood ◽  
Valerie Fraser ◽  
Sarah J. Demelo
Keyword(s):  
Full Article ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Art ◽  
Latin American Art ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
The University ◽  
Year 2000

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Please check back later for the full article. The Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA) was originally founded as the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA) in 1993, but, with no permanent display space, a versatile online presence has been essential to its success as a resource for students, curators, and researchers. By about the year 2000 it comprised around 400 works from about 10 different countries. While it is important to remember that viewing a work of art onscreen is no substitute for viewing it firsthand, the digital catalogue is an essential aspect of ESCALA’s activities. It can offer resources that a paper catalogue cannot (it can provide a record of an artist’s performance, for example), it serves as a versatile resource for teaching and research, and it generates interest in the field among those who happen upon it through random searches.

The Decline and Fall of Slavery in Nineteenth Century Brazil

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 71-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Postgraduate Student ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University

It is in my case a particular honour to address the Royal Historical Society. As president of the Society for four years in the 1960s, Professor R. A. Humphreys, the first holder of the Chair of Latin American History in the University of London which I have been privileged to hold since 1986 (and, incidentally, my teacher both as an undergraduate and as a postgraduate student), gave a series of distinguished presidential addresses on aspects of British and United States policy towards Latin America, and Anglo-American rivalries in Latin America, during the nineteenth century. But it seems that I am the first historian of Latin America to present a paper to the Society on a specifically Latin American theme.

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