Testimonio at 50

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Guadalupe Escobar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
The Political ◽  
Extractive Industry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Capitalism ◽  
Revolutionary Period

A reassessment of the testimonio genre over the past five decades reveals continuities of state-sponsored violence from the revolutionary period to the present. An analysis of Pamela Yates’s 500 Years: Life in Resistance (2017) and Katia Lara’s Berta vive (Berta Lives, 2016) shows Cold War reverberations, unfolding deeper histories of dispossession and legacies of resistance. The first uncovers entangled issues of Guatemalan genocide disavowal and extractive industry while the second denounces the political feminicide of the Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres. Both testimonial documentaries mobilize an “archive effect” to contest the optic of colonial capitalism through the ecofeminist perspectives of indigenous women activists. Una reevaluación del género del testimonial durante las últimas cinco décadas revela la continuidad de la violencia estatal desde el período revolucionario hasta el presente. Un análisis de 500 Years: Life in Resistance (2017) de Pamela Yates y Berta vive (2016) de Katia Lara da cuenta de las reverberaciones de la Guerra Fría, desplegando historias más profundas de desposesión y legados de resistencia. La primera obra muestra los intrincados hilos en torno a la negación del genocidio guatemalteco y la industria extractiva, mientras que el segundo denuncia el feminicidio político de la activista ambiental hondureña Berta Cáceres. Ambos documentales testimoniales utilizan un “efecto de archivo” para impugnar la óptica del capitalismo colonial a través de las perspectivas ecofeministas de las activistas indígenas.

From Ideological to Humanistic Interpretations

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-260
Author(s):  
Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Paradigms ◽  
The Cold War

The recent evolution of both the historiography on the Spanish Civil War, and even the general population's perception of the conflict, cannot be separated from the changes in the political and cultural paradigms in Europe since the end of the Cold War. By this I mean that Europeans, but not only them, have been evolving from a mostly ideological view of the past to an increasingly humanistic one.

Vietnamese or Chinese: Viet-kieu in the Vietnam-China Borderlands

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuk Wah Chan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
The Media

AbstractThis article examines the contested identity of a particular group of Viet-kieu, who were born in China and who returned to Vietnam in the 1970s, by looking into their personal histories, descent backgrounds and the political and socio-economic processes they lived through in the past few decades. Unlike other Viet-kieu who returned from the West, the Viet-kieu in the borderlands rarely received any attention from the media or academia. They led a double life both in China and in Vietnam and experienced dramatic changes of fate from the 1970s, through the 1980s, to the 1990s. Their hybrid cultural endowment and cross-border familial ties were both detrimental and beneficial to their social and economic life within different historical contexts. Reopened borders around the world in the post-Cold War era have generated discourses on transnational economic integration, regional connectedness, as well as fluid mobility and identities. It has become a fashion to criticize the study of culture and identity as rigid entities, while the increasing stress on subjectivity and agency has made identity seem ever more evolving and changing. Putting aside the romantic notion of fluid and multiple identities, this article brings up a number of empirical cases to illustrate how identity is often shaped by the possibilities and constraints under different politico-economic circumstances.

Anglo-American Primacy and the Global Spread of Democracy: An International Genealogy

2012 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Narizny
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Spread ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
American Primacy ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Cold War

For the past three centuries, Great Britain and the United States have stood in succession at the apex of the international hierarchy of power. They have been on the winning side of every systemic conflict in this period, from the War of the Spanish Succession to the Cold War. As a result, they have been able to influence the political and economic development of states around the world. In many of their colonies, conquests, and clients, they have propagated ideals and institutions conducive to democratization. At the same time, they have defeated numerous rivals whose success would have had ruinous consequences for democracy. The global spread of democracy, therefore, has been endogenous to the game of great power politics.

The Presence of Maoism in Mexico

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 176-196
Author(s):  
Daniel Lemus-Delgado
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
The Political ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Revolutionary Period ◽  
Agency And Structure

During the Cold War, the influence of Maoism as a third way of establishing a new international order inspired several Latin American guerrilla groups, including some in Mexico. This article analyzes the influence of Maoism in Mexico in particular, and pays specific attention to how Florencio Medrano, a peasant leader, was motivated by Maoist thought to establish the Rubén Jaramillo Proletarian Neighborhood, a self-governing neighborhood, and how this site was considered a critical factor for his development as a guerrilla. In the continuing debate over the relationship between agency and structure, the life and work of Florencio Medrano evidences how both social context and personal history influenced his aspirations and demands. By conducting an analysis of primary and secondary sources, this article analyzes some elements of Maoist thought and its diffusion in Latin America in the context of the Cold War. In addition, the article explains the political formation of Florencio Medrano in the Mexican post-revolutionary period, examines Maoist influences on his political formation and participation in pro-communist organizations, and reviews Maoist influence on the organization of the Rubén Jaramillo Neighborhood. Finally, the conclusions emphasize how the peasant origins of Medrano gave rise to his particular understanding of Maoism.

The Sinosphere left looks at rising China: Missed dialogues and the search for an ‘Asian perspective’

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Zhiyu ◽  
Morgan Rocks
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Past ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Rising China ◽  
China Today ◽  
Political Economic

Contemporary left-wing debate in the Sinosphere, here limited to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, and Taiwan, is often fuelled by the political, economic, and social implications of the PRC’s rise as a world power. While agreeing upon basic premises of anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, left-wing intellectuals in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan come to loggerheads over critiquing how China’s rise influences its leftist identity. In the past few years we have witnessed a series of fractured and one-sided arguments among Sinosphere left-wing intellectuals. As part of the research dialogues on mapping the intellectual public sphere in China today, this article examines the cacophony of the Sinosphere leftist echo chamber, starting from contentious debates over the leftist nature of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement, and then focusing on voices that are attempting to bring together left-wing traditions from the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Scholars such as He Zhaotian, Chen Kuan-Hsing, and Sun Ge are exploring possibilities of de-imperialization, decolonization, and de-Cold War-ization, in the hopes of creating a shared, emancipatory ‘Asian perspective’. Though few in number, these voices demonstrate a growing utopian urge within the Sinosphere left to participate in mutual dialogues on possible futures.

Emissaries of the Violent Peace

Mortal Doubt ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 67-92
Author(s):  
Anthony W. Fontes
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Gang Members ◽  
Guatemala City ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transnational Migrations ◽  
Made In

This chapter pieces together a few key elements of mara history that set the arc of their dystopian evolution and made them into harbingers of a new age of violence. Exploring the rise of the gangs in Guatemala means linking irrefutable historical phenomena—U.S. imperialism and Cold War atrocities, transnational migrations and deportations, and so on—with the multiple and contradictory ways people remember and make meaning out of the past. Drawing on the stories of former gang members and gang associates alongside journalists’ and scholars’ accounts, this chapter maps the political and social ferment of Guatemala City when the maras first took root; how decades of U.S. involvement in Guatemala gave the maras’ made-in-America style an irresistible magnetism for some urban youth; and, finally, the ways that this “new way of being a gang” seemed, for a moment, to structure and regulate internecine gang violence before it too fell apart.

1776: The British Dimension

1977 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-199
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Revolutionary Period

When I was invited to speak here today and it was suggested that I talk on the political aspects of Anglo-American intellectual relations, especially in the Revolutionary period, I thought I would try to summarize the recent writings of American historians on the development of American political thought in the formative years of the eighteenth century—its branching off from a peculiar line of English radical thought and its realization in American political institutions in ways that have profoundly affected American public life. It is a subject on which American historians have lavished much thought and writing in the past fifteen years, and while its outlines are now quite clear, it is still a subject with unresolved problems in interpretation. It is that subject that I indicated in a few sentences in the programme notes that you received.

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

The Political Economy of Local Governance in Yemen

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Benoit Challand ◽  
Joshua Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Local Initiatives ◽  
Self Rule

This paper provides an historical exploration of local governance in Yemen across the past sixty years. It highlights the presence of a strong tradition of local self-rule, self-help, and participation “from below” as well as the presence of a rival, official, political culture upheld by central elites that celebrates centralization and the strong state. Shifts in the predominance of one or the other tendency have coincided with shifts in the political economy of the Yemeni state(s). When it favored the local, central rulers were compelled to give space to local initiatives and Yemen experienced moments of political participation and local development.

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