Sex, drugs, and neocolonial leisure: An intermedial history and analysis of Dieter Schidor’s Kalt in Kolumbien (1985)

Reviewed by: Mexican Melodrama: Film and Nation from the Golden Age to the New Wave by Elena Lahr-Vivaz Olivia Cosentino Lahr-Vivaz, Elena. Mexican Melodrama: Film and Nation from the Golden Age to the New Wave. Tucson: The U of Arizona P, 2016. 218 pp. Lahr-Vivaz's first book is a fresh, comparative project that reads "new-wave" Mexican films of the 1990s-early 2000s in conjunction with classic melodramas from Mexico's Golden Age (1930-58). Offering in-depth analyses of historical and industrial contexts, Mexican Melodrama maps the development and subsequent unraveling of nosotros, or the imagined Mexican nation created through cinema, in relation to melodrama. This book follows sustained interest in the Golden Age period, including Ramírez Berg's The Classical Mexican Cinema: The Poetics of the Exceptional Golden Age Films (2015), and gives further attention to what LahrVivaz terms the "new-wave" (or nuevo cine mexicano or new Mexican cinema) that "emerged in the 1990s and continued into the 2000s" (9). This term could create confusion because it does not refer to the French or other global new waves, nor does it necessarily reference Alvaray's (2008) notion of aesthetic renewal in recent Latin American film due to economic and social "waves" of change. Rather, LahrVivaz uses "new-wave" to interweave film with the nation, lo mexicano, because according to Jeff Menne, "a new wave may only be intelligible against the backdrop of the nation-state" (qtd. in Lahr-Vivaz 9). This study intervenes in conversations within Latin American and Mexican film and cultural studies, particularly about the function of melodrama, allegory, and nation-building in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While the book is organized by chapter into thematic comparisons, it begins with an overview of the terms "melodrama" and "Mexico," layered with information about the history of Mexican cinema. Many scholars have underscored the importance of melodrama to Latin American cultural production—as documented in volumes edited by Sadlier (2009) and Herlinghaus (2002), which both treat melodrama beyond the Mexican context and delve into other media (television and music). Echoing Brooks, Singer, Williams, Gledhill, López, and Burton-Carvajal, Lahr-Vivaz understands melodrama as a "mode" and sometimes "metagenre" (11). Importantly, melodrama is "protean," seen in various forms across time (10). This approach foregrounds Lahr-Vivaz's reading of melodrama in contemporary Mexican film as it relates to nation and allegory, tracing its roots back to the widely accepted idea that Golden Age melodramas "imagined [Mexico] into existence through tears and laughter" (12). She grounds her argument in the idea of Mexico as an "(empathetically) imagined community," Linda Williams's extension of Benedict Anderson (10). Lahr-Vivaz claims that new-wave directors return to classical melodrama in order to "demonstrate the limitations (rather than the possibilities) of Mexico as a construct in which all spectators might believe," and throughout, she points to the rich ambiguity that results from melodramatic excess(5). Subsequent chapters, organized by theme, contrast one Golden Age film with two to three new-wave films, resulting in an interesting amalgamation of heavily studied (Amores perros, Y tu mamá también) and relatively untouched films [End Page 265] (Modelo antiguo, Ángel de fuego, ¡¿Qué te ha dado esa mujer?!). Chapter two examines how references to the Mexican Revolution and the "taming" of the indomitable woman once helped form national unity (Enamorada), but now "allegorize the nation as intrinsically fragmented" and encourage spectators to be more critical and questioning of melodramatic excess (43). The following chapter contrasts the moral clarity of Golden Age cabaretera melodramas with regards to incest (La mujer del puerto) with the greater ambiguity of new-wave films that do not directly punish such relationships (though unmentioned, Por la libre (2001) follows Lahr-Vivaz's theory). In chapter four, Lahr-Vivaz suggests that the characters' suffering and shared tears—which once led to the consolidation of nation (Nosotros los pobres)—only end up creating a nosotros that is forged in shared culpability between protagonists and spectators, especially in El crimen del padre Amaro. This reading is especially interesting when we consider narratives of excess in contemporary Mexican film that treat drug violence and social problems. Lahr...

In the last two decades, lesbian, gay, and queer literary studies have gained significant ground in the broader field of Latin American cultural studies. Within this growing body of critical work, however, the Central American region and its literature have been largely ignored. This article, which focuses on the representation of lesbians and queer desire in the Guatemalan novel Labios (2004) ‘Lips’ by Maurice Echeverría, seeks to contribute to such a lack in Central American perspective. This essay contends, Echeverría’s text, one of a growing number of recent Central American narratives to call attention to and portray gay, lesbian, and/or transgender individuals and their experiences, evinces an alternate and composite form of visibility that can be understood as a visibilidad cosmo-queer . This visibility is an expression of the complex social reality of sexual minorities in postwar Guatemala, one marked by global or cosmopolitan discourses of gay and lesbian identity politics as well as queer modes of self-definition that challenge those same dominant discourses.

Reviewed by: Latin American Melodrama: Passion, Pathos, and Entertainment Victoria Ruétalo Sadlier, Darlene, ed. and intro. Latin American Melodrama: Passion, Pathos, and Entertainment. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2009. 183 pp. Melodrama has a long and rich history in Latin America. Its height came during the industrial period known as the Golden Age (1930s–50s), a time when in the larger industries (mostly Mexico and Argentina, and to a lesser degree Brazil) cinema attracted huge audiences nationally and across the region with its affective mode. This anthology tackles the complex history of melodrama in Latin America. Generally, the essays are of insightful critical value and offer a significant introspective on different aspects of melodrama. In particular they establish valuable connections between cinema’s past and present, finding melodrama or the “melodramatic imagination” in everything from the New Latin American cinema to documentaries and telenovelas in today’s global market. There seems to be a longing for the melodramas of the Golden Age cinemas yet very little actually covers this period of film production. For instance, Darlene Sadlier’s chapter “Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Cinema de lágrimas” is a case in point. She chooses to exemplify the importance of the genre through the work of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, one of the leaders of the Cinema Novo movement. In 1994, the BFI selected dos Santos to make a film commemorating the 100 years of cinema. Given such a daunting task, as Sadlier rightly points out, with a very diverse region and 100 years of filmmaking to take into account, Latin America’s only representative opts to make a fiction film that documents the Golden Age of Mexican melodrama. His return to this period and genre confirms melodrama’s impact on the region’s cinematic history in general and on dos Santos’s work in particular. Sadlier’s analysis adeptly interweaves both of these arguments. But it also shows a need to somehow validate melodrama as she talks about it through dos Santos, one of the great auteurs highly associated with the New Latin American cinema, the more respected period of film production. Nevertheless, the anthology does cover the Golden Age period melodramas in three of the essays, one for each of the most important industries. Gilberto Perez’s “Melodrama of the Spirited Woman Averturera” examines the most cited melodrama in Mexico, Alberto Gout’s Aventurera (1948). He provides a close reading of the film but disappointingly ignores the rich scholarship that does exist about this film and other cabareteras. However, Paula Félix-Didier and Andrés Levinson provide a perceptive reading about a less discussed film. The authors contend with the few works that have studied La guerra gaucha (1942) to argue that the film, which like nineteenth-century writings about the nation, uses melodrama to comment on independence in keeping with what was happening at the time of its production, calling attention and defending Argentine cultural identity at a time when it was being threatened by the foreign. Cid Vasconcelos focuses on the Estado Novo period in Brazil. Argila (1940), Aves sem ninho (1939), and Romance proibido (1944) all promote “woman as civilizers” advancing new ideas about work, education and social relationships that fit into the state’s role for women and speak about the new woman as a small-scale version of the great leader (Getúlio Vargas), exalting national values. [End Page 380] Luisela Alvaray’s astute contribution summarizes the role that melodrama has had in the creation of the Venezuelan film industry, a more marginal example. She describes the migratory forces and their impact in the development of melodrama in Venezuela, which helped to define the direction of national cinema. While she starts in the classic period with the Mexican and Argentine co-productions, she goes on to show how melodrama has endured in the more recent works by national auteur Román Chalbaud and others. There are two essays that look at the 1960s and 1970s and their ironic use of melodrama. Ismail Xavier in, “The Humiliation of the Father: Melodrama and Cinema Novo’s Critique of Conservative Modernization,” studies Arnaldo Jabor’s Toda nudez será castigada (1972) and O casamento (1975...

The periodization of Latin American economic history around ‘external shocks’ has been increasingly rejected in recent years. Yet if we wish to explore – as an open question – the role of the international economy in the economic development of Latin America, the First World War and the World Depression enclose a significant period. It bridges the gap between the first major ‘external shock’ of the twentieth century and the final breakdown of the export-led growth mechanism of the ‘Golden Age’ whose starting point had been around 1870. The period also represents the key years in the changeover from one hegemony to another: Britain's decline as a major economic power was hastened by the war (when Germany was eliminated) and the United States was thrust into the role of Latin America's major investment and trade partner.

Three case histories show how work in the medical social sciences--to the extent that such work reveals the origins of health problems in social structures of wealth and power--can become dangerous enough to threaten one's livelihood and in some instances one's very life. In this presentation, I encourage critical and engaged scholarship by referring to examples of dangerous work that should receive more attention: social medicine in Latin America and the critique of managerial ideology in the United States. Although social medicine has become a widely respected field of research, teaching, and clinical practice in Latin America, its accomplishments remain little known in the English-speaking world. For centuries, indigenous cultures in Latin America have held belief systems linking social conditions to patterns of illness and death. Latin American accounts of social medicine's history emphasize its European origins, especially in the contributions of Rudolf Virchow. In the United States, with the impact of the Flexner Report (1910) and its supporters, Virchow's vision of social medicine went into decline. On the other hand, in Latin America, social medicine flourished as a focus of education and research. Since social medicine's "golden age" during the 1930s, teachers, researchers, and practitioners have produced major achievements despite the dangers of this work, which in several instances have included torture, imprisonment, or death. An ideology favoring managerial decision making in the United States has influenced crucial policy decisions, and the justifications for these decisions have manifested symbolic politics in addition to the evaluation of factual evidence. With ambiguous empirical support, managerial ideology has fostered the general growth of managed care, the implementation of Medicaid managed care by state governments, the expansion of managed care in rural areas, and the impact of "evidence-based medicine" on policy and clinical decisions. If the occupational risks of critical work in the medical social sciences are not taken, we forfeit some of the most important gifts offered by "the sociological imagination."

Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts

This paper examines Mexico's development experience during the 'golden age' of export-led growth in Latin America. Propelled by liberal reforms under the Porfirio Diaz regime (1877-1910), Mexico's exports expanded at unprecedented rates, and this is widely believed to have brought about rapid growth and far-reaching structural changes to the domestic economy. This paper questions this view. Using a new and more comprehensive data set, it argues that buoyant export performance had relatively little impact on key macroeconomic and sectoral indicators. The pre 1911 Mexican experience is thus shown to be quite distinct from that of other large primary producing countries such as Argentina and Canada, where rapid economic growth was largely export-led. A distinctive feature of the Mexican economy during the 1877-1911 period was the rapid

Part 1. Introduction: 1. Reflexions and mediations on three cities as sources and sites for achievement Patrick O'Brien Part II. Economic Growth and Demographic Change: 2. Economies of Agglomeration and the Golden Age of Antwerp Michael Limberger 3. Clusters of achievement: the economy of Amsterdam in its Golden Age Cle Lesger 4. The economy of London, 1660-1730 Peter Earle Part III. Architecture and Urban Space: 5. One of the largest cities in the low countries One of the best fortified in Europe Piet Lombaerde 6. The glorious city: monumentalism and public space in seventeenth century Amsterdam Marjeolin 't Hart 7. Architecture and urban space in London Judy Loach Part IV. Fine and Decorative Arts: 8. The fine and decorative arts in Antwerp's Golden Age Hans Vlieghe 9. The rise of Amsterdam as a cultural centre: the market for paintings, 1580-1680 Marten Jan Bok 10. Cultural production and import substitution: the fine and decorative arts in London, 1660-1730 David Ormrod Part V. Books and Publishing: 11. Antwerp: books, publishing and cultural production before 1585 Werner Waterschoot 12. Metropolis of print: the Amsterdam book trade in the seventeenth century Paul Hoftijzer 13. Printing, publishing and reading in London, 1660-1720 Adrian Johns Part VI. Scientific and Useful Knowledge: 14. Science for sale: the metropolitan stimulus for scientific achievements in sixteenth century Antwerp Geert Vanpaemel 15. Amsterdam as a centre of Dutch learning in the Dutch Golden Age Karel Davids 16. Philosophers in the counting-houses: commerce, coffee-houses and experiment in early modern London Larry Stewart.

The global circulation of cinema in Korean film festivals includes the exhibition of Latin American films in Asia, which was very uncommon during the 20th century. This chapter aims to highlight the implications of the programming of Latin American films at the Busan International Film Festival – BIFF (1996), the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival – BiFan (1997), and the Jeonju International Film Festival – JIFF (2000). These festivals have been key agents in laying ties between the Asian and Latin American cinema in recent years: The JIFF co-produced three Argentine films. Three Latin American sections were programmed at BiFan: Nightmares from the Other Side of the Earth (Argentina, 2012); Blood Window to Latin America (2014), and Mexican Genre Film (2015). There were numerous special programs devoted to Latin American directors and groups such as Arturo Ripstein (BIFF, 2012), Cali Group (BIFF, 2016), Nicolas Pereda (JIFF, 2011), Cuban Cinema (JIFF, 2004), and Alejandro Jodorowsky (BiFan, 2013). With extended data on the Korean Film Festivals programming, this chapter will show how the BIFF, JIFF, and BiFan have helped to shape the notion of Latin American cinema in the East Asian region as well as nourish the ties between the two regions.

Reviewed by: A History of Theatre in Spain ed. by María M. Delgado and David T. Gies Bárbara Mujica María M. Delgado and David T. Gies, editors. A History of Theatre in Spain. CAMBRIDGE UP, 2012 (PAPERBACK EDITION 2015). 558 pp. THIS NEW CONTRIBUTION TO HISPANISM by María M. Delgado and David T. Gies is an unconventional literary history. Because it is a compendium of articles by specialists, A History of Theatre in Spain avoids some of the major pitfalls that plague other literary histories. Single-authored chronicles inevitably offer a limited perspective, as no one scholar can be an expert in every aspect or period of a national literature. Even highly qualified experts in one area—say, the Spanish comedia—may be deficient in others, such as the zarzuela or contemporary feminist theater. However, the editors of A History of Theatre in Spain offer an overview of Spanish theater from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century provided by over two dozen eminent scholars of diverse backgrounds, areas of expertise, and approaches. The result is a history of Spanish theater that is panoramic, profound, and multifaceted. The editors' insightful Introduction poses some questions usually ignored by scholars. The most basic is: What is Spanish theater? The tendency of critics, historians, and politicians to equate Spain with Madrid or Castile has led scholars to overlook the existence of cultures that have flourished in the Iberian Peninsula in languages other than Spanish, for example, Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Navarro-Aragonese. Furthermore, the primacy given to Spain's Golden Age has led scholars to neglect the rich theatrical traditions of Spain's eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Theatrical culture is much broader than a selected group of canonical works, argue the editors. Performance techniques, audience tastes, dramatic space, and myriad other elements all come into play. Rather than assigning hegemony to either text or performance-related issues, the editors have sought to view theater in its totality, including script, stage architecture, kinetics, the role of publishers, and paralinguistic material. Although their focus is on peninsular Spain, they have sought to expand our notion of Spanish theater by exploring issues of colonialism and the broad influence of Spain's theater abroad, both in Latin America and Europe. The editors' frankly revisionist approach calls into questions conventional assumptions about what constitutes a national theater and the parameters of Spain's theater. [End Page 135] In "The Challenges of Historiography: The Theatre in Medieval Spain," Ángel Gómez Moreno challenges the long-accepted 1958 statement by Fernando Lázaro Carreter that the history of theater in Medieval Spain is "the history of an absence" (18). For decades it has been assumed that almost no evidence exists of a theatrical tradition between the Auto de los Reyes Magos, composed at the end of the twelfth century, and the plays of Juan del Encina, the first of which appeared in the Cancionero de 1496. However, Gómez Moreno argues that records attesting to payments for scenery and costumes and references to paratheatrical productions do survive. Furthermore, scholars are now recovering some missing theatrical texts or finding references to them in other works. To gain an understanding of the breadth of theatrical activity in medieval Iberia, argues Gómez Moreno, we need to expand our horizons. Gómez Moreno examines the liturgical theater of Toledo and elsewhere, as well as momos and other medieval theatrical forms in Portugal. He concludes, "Modern scholarship has allowed us to perceive, albeit in indirect ways, the existence of a vigorous tradition of performance during the Middle Ages in Spain" (35). The following four chapters examine different aspects of the theater of the Golden Age, impugning some widely held assumptions. In "Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina: Spain's Golden Age Drama and its Legacy," Jonathan Thacker considers Lope de Vega, the most influential playwright of Spain's Golden Age, not only as a creator of plays but also as a theatergoer. Thacker believes that Lope's greatest source of inspiration was his experience as a spectator. By watching plays, he learned what pleased the audience. If Lope rejected the neo-Aristotelian rules that...

Felipe Hernandez Beyond Modernist Masters: Contemporary Architecture in Latin America . Basel: Birkhauser Architecture, 2010, 152 pp., 135 color and 144 b/w illus. $59.95 (hardcover), ISBN 9783764387693 Felipe Hernandez's handsomely illustrated survey presents a timely overview of architectural production in Latin America during the past decade. Hernandez positions his book as a critique of much of the existing literature on Latin American architecture. This, he argues, continues to focus reductively on the period between 1929 and 1960, and on the work of such internationally renowned “masters” as Mexico's Luis Barragan (1902–1988), Brazil's Oscar Niemeyer (b. 1907), or Venezuela's Carlos Raul Villanueva (1900–1975). The “golden age” these men represent was defined by the combination of economic efflorescence and the embrace of modern architecture by several Latin American states as central to their nation-building efforts. Hernandez demonstrates that the panorama of architectural production in Latin America is now significantly different. While renowned architects based in this vast region build, teach, and receive awards around the world, a privilege reserved for very few in the past, the scarcity of resources and state patronage in many contexts makes localized interventions—rather than the grand-scale schemes for which the “masters” are best known—the most common type of architectural venture today. Hernandez's five chapters explore projects and built works defined by these conditions, challenging the problematic ways in …

This volume stages an intergenerational dialogue among a number of prominent scholars to introduce and deepen engagement with Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy. The collection includes a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, the authors include examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field. Lastly, a number of contributors in the book address themes of aesthetics and embodiment, including issues of visual representation, queer desire, and disability within Latin American and US Latinx feminisms.

wave of political organizing across indigenous communities. Indigenous communities have formed national and international peasant confederations, law centers, cultural centers, and, more recently, political parties and platforms. Challenging the historical image of Indians as a submissive, backward, and anachronistic group, these newly formed organizations have declared, embraced, and mobilized around their indigenous identity. Their demands have included territorial autonomy, respect for customary law, new forms of political representation, and bicultural education. While the specific characteristics of organizations and agendas vary, they have commonly demanded that constitutional, democratic, individual rights be respected and that collective indigenous rights be granted. Consequently, they are contesting the practice and terms of citizenship in Latin America's new democracies. The emergence of indigenous organizations, politicization of indigenous identities, and demand for indigenous rights over the past two decades challenge historical norms and scholarly conclusions about the politicization of ethnic cleavages in Latin America. The historical record suggests that in the twentieth century indigenous communities have rarely initiated or sustained social movements that proclaimed an indigenous identity and demanded indigenous rights. To the contrary, active rural organizing within and between indigenous communities has traditionally been the reserve of peasant unions, political parties, churches, and revolutionaries. These movements have historically attempted to mobilize Indians to forge class, partisan, religious and/or revolutionary identities over, and often against, indigenous ones. Accordingly, scholars have generally underscored the weak politicization of ethnic cleavages in Latin America and concluded that ethnicity in Latin America has had comparatively little explicit impact on political organizing, party platforms, debates, and conflict, in sharp contrast to other regions in the world. I The emergence of indigenous organizations that proclaim and promote indigenous identity and rights, therefore, constitutes a new phenomenon that merits explanation.2 This article addresses why indigenous identity has become a more salient basis of political organizing and source of political claims in Latin America by comparing rural politics since 1945 in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru.

From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema Between the Second and Third Worlds

Research Article| August 01 1986 A Bibliography of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Treatises Don Paul Abbott Don Paul Abbott Dept. of Rhetoric, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1986) 4 (3): 275–292. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.3.275 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Don Paul Abbott; A Bibliography of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Spanish Treatises. Rhetorica 1 August 1986; 4 (3): 275–292. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.3.275 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1986 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.