Un círculo inscrito a mano

Jesuits, Nahuas, and the Good Death Society in Mexico City, 1710-1767

The paper discusses current scientific issues related to the study of the traditional worldview and ritualism of the Khakas people. The work is focused on the analysis of the traditional festival of veneration of “land-water” by the Kyzyls — an ethnic group of the Khakas living in the northern part of Khakassia and in the south of Kras-noyarsk Krai. The characteristic of the ritual complex associated with the worship of the host-spirits is presented: the land spirits (mountains) — tag taig, and the water spirits (springs, lakes, rivers) — sug taiyg. The main sources of the research are unpublished field ethnographic materials. Archival ethnographic information related to this topic, collected in the 1970s by M.S. Usmanova and other researchers from the Tomsk State University, are introduced in the scientific discourse. In the process of studying the indicated problem, it was found that in the culture of the Khakas, including the Kyzyl people, an important place was given to the worship of their native land — sher-sug taiyg. In the religious-mythological consciousness, its specific personification was the spirit-masters of the mountains — tag eezi, and the water spirits — sug eezi. This worldview was due to the natural landscape of the territory in which they live. It features a mountainous terrain with a range of diverse water bodies — the streams, rivers, lakes, etc. The daily domestic life and economic activities of the ethnic community in question were directly related to them. It is argued that in the worldview of the people, connection between the human and nature goes beyond the framework of rational interaction. They were convinced of the close mystical interrelation of natural objects with the life and well-being of people. One of the common ways to maintain a steady balanced relationship between them was the rituals of sacrifice and celebration of these supernatural beings. It was found that in the cult practice of the Kyzyls, the sher-sug taiyg included two or even three specialized rites — tag / kol / sug taiyg, which were closely interconnected with each other and formed a single ritual complex. This sacralized event was held on a regular basis. It had a collective nature with a strictly defined structure, incorporating the leader and other immediate participants, as well as the victim themselves.

Caracterización de la Pequeña Edad de Hielo en el México central a través de fuentes documentales

Contents volume 20, 1984

On the Character and Causes of Inequality in Latin America

Historians concerned with topics of urban, food, retail, and political history have long argued that ideals of political regulation decisively influence and shape urban food distribution systems in European and American cities. For example, researchers have been able to show that throughout the late 18th and mid-19th centuries, in cities like Paris, Mexico City, New York, and Manchester, surprisingly similar discussions were taking place about the regulation and liberalisation of bread and meat production, and their related distribution systems. The article engages with this international discussion by arguing that these debates represent a kind of “double movement” between regulated and self-regulated markets, as outlined by Karl Polanyi. It then raises the question of how urbanisation and political regulation affected the food supply system of the city of Vienna during the Vormärz period (1815–1847). By cartographically analysing the topographic development of bakers within and around the urban area, the article concludes that political-economic and demographic factors led to the creation of two distinctive, competing, and simultaneously complementary systems of bread supply during the first half of the 19th century.

Architecture in Mexico City in the mid-20th century was shaped by rapid economic and urban growth, demographic change, new construction technologies, and politics. Architects adapted modernist idioms and those that evoked historical precedents for new purposes. Key figures who had begun practice earlier in the century, including Mario Pani, Juan O’Gorman, José Villagrán García, and Luis Barragán, designed major new works and strongly influenced the profession, even as a new generation led by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Ricardo Legorreta, and Teodoro González de Léon came of age. As they had been since the 1920s, public patrons were the most important clients of modern buildings, which often addressed needs for better housing, education, and health care. The period also saw the rise of modern suburbs and the evolution of the single-family house, as well as the creation of major buildings for increasingly important cultural institutions, especially museums. As they had in preceding decades, architects used the non-architectural arts, particularly painting, to distinguish their works. The legacy of the Mexican muralist movement was most evident on the facades of major buildings in the new University City, where the influence of international modernist planning principles was also striking. In 1968 Mexico City hosted the Olympics, for which architects, planners, and designers created a network of buildings and images that functioned interdependently to present Mexico as cosmopolitan and historically rooted in its indigenous history. Sprawl and pollution worsened in the 1970s, as the capital came to be dominated by buildings that were not designed by architects. While some observers questioned the relevance of architecture in the face of seemingly unstoppable and uncontrollable growth, talented young architects responded with buildings notable for their monumentality, mass, and sophisticated engagement with historical types.

Revolutionary leaders favored depictions of Mexico City in the mid-20th century that highlighted the progress and orderly growth of a modern industrial city. The ruling party made Mexico City the focus of post–World War II development policies and the showcase for the success of those policies in achieving the new goals of the Mexican Revolution during a period of sustained economic growth known as the “Mexican miracle.” When, in the early 1960s, the American anthropologist Oscar Lewis published The Children of Sánchez, his popular study of urban poverty, and turned the public’s attention away from the sites that underscored the official narrative of orderly industrial growth, it incited a heated public debate in Mexico City. The book contained the oral histories of a family living in the low-income neighborhood of Tepito, in the center of the capital, and was a shocking account, told in their own words, of a family’s attempt to survive urban life. Supporters of the modernizing policies of federal officials and the capital’s mayor, Ernesto Uruchurtu, attacked the book in the press and even filed formal complaints with Mexico’s attorney general demanding that the book and its author be banned from the country and the publisher reprimanded. They claimed that the book was too vulgar for public consumption and called it a foreigner’s attack on the reputation of the country and the city. Critics of the Institutional Revolutionary Party used the publicity generated by the attacks to open up a dialog about the marginalized people left behind by urban development and engaged in the debates as a safe way to express its own concerns about Uruchurtu’s inhumane development policies and the government’s insistence on hiding reality to present the city to the international community as a modern showcase.

The role of spirituality in human life has continued to receive much attention as attested to by the number of disciplines represented in this book. However, more consideration needs to be given to the impact of the dark side of spirituality in the lives of individuals and communities especially in a world characterized by issues related to globalization, materialism and religious and cultural diversity. Nurturing spirituality may be one way of promoting individual and communal wellbeing and social cohesion through self-knowledge and awareness of others. This chapter, then, serves as the introduction to the topic upon which this book is based: spirituality across disciplines. It examines the notion of spirituality as it is being used in todays’ world across a variety of disciplines. It notes that, in general, researchers tend to avoid offering a definition of the term so that some levels of ambiguity surround the concept. This, in turn, has the potential to reduce the impact of research and application and creates problems of authenticity for the discipline. Therefore, this chapter offers a rationale for investigating the concept of spirituality as it is being understood and applied across a range of disciplines to bring some clarity to various understandings so that current research studies will be better able to inform future research and practice.

This paper analyzes director Roberto Fiesco's narrative and ethnographic approach in the documentary "Quebranto" (2013), focusing on Coral Bonelli, a transgender woman, dancer, and sex worker from Mexico City. Fiesco blends audiovisual techniques and archival footage to biographically depict Bonelli, using oral testimony and innovative editing. Drawing on Diana Taylor’s and Sarah Pink’s theories, the study explores how these elements manage the biographical and emotional depth of Bonelli's story. It examines spatial elements in the film, which construct a narrative voice and contribute to Bonelli’s portrayal. Ultimately, the paper explores how Fiesco’s strategies convey Bonelli’s transcendence through archival footage, personal performance, and narrative innovation, pushing the boundaries of documentary cinema in representing queer subjectivity.

The paper seeks to contribute to the knowledge and research on how universities can use their resources to build bridges through design and social innovation with their surrounding communities. It is based on the case of the Social Design HUB of CENTRO University in Mexico City and its urban garden project CULTIVA, a joint initiative, based on transversal collaboration and the creation of shared value. The paper informs on the development of CULTIVA as an area for learning and social interaction in a neighborhood with a substantial decline in public space and community life, and shares findings related to participants pro-files, their perceptions and behavior about community life, and the effects of projects and collaborations based on mutual exchange. This work includes an analysis of the scope of the initiative based on The Social Design Pathways Tool.

The book is a “prequel” to Borderland Pokutia: The Armenian Commonwealth published in 2014. It presents the formation and everyday life of the Armenian community in Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine). The military stronghold and the city were established from scratch in 1662 by the nobleman and magnate Andrzej Potocki, who invited settlers of various ethnic backgrounds. The Armenians were granted autonomy of their own local government and court of justice, as did two other communes: Polish-Ruthenian and Jewish. The book tells about the Armenians who came to Stanisławów mainly from their settlements in Wallachia and Moldavia, but also from Polish cities such as Jazłowiec and Kamieniec Podolski, which had been captured by the Ottoman Turks. Various aspects of life of the Armenian community are presented, such as the court and the Church, and aspects of personal lives of their members, such as work, traditions, conflicts and anxieties. They are shown from the perspective of individual people: initially, the Manug Giragosowicz family, and then the Agopsowicz family from the mid-18th century until the second half of the 19th century, when the book published in 2014 takes over. Borderland Pokutia – the Origins: Armenians consists exclusively of numerous historical sources. The book includes a foreword by Marcin Łukasz Majewski, the author’s preface, 22 tables showing family ties, a glossary, a bibliographic list and two indexes.

The article presents a complex analysis of the Mariupol necropolis as a phenomenon of the ethno-religious and sociocultural life of the Jewish community of Mariupol and the Azov region before the Soviet period. Based on the data contained in the register books of the Mariupol synagogue, the mortality statistics of the Jewish community of Mariupol and partly in the Azov region were calculated. These data are compared with fragmentary data on the statistics of quantitative development of the community during the 1860s and early 1920s. It was concluded that these data are correlated with the growth process of the Jewish community during the second half of the 19th century. It was concluded that the necessary conditions and appropriate institutions were gradually formed in the city to ensure this important aspect of the spiritual life of the Jewish community (cemetery, burial brotherhood of Hevra Kadish). Since the end of the 1860s the Jewish cemetery begins to function, which has become an important element of the full-fledged spiritual and religious life of the Jewish community of Mariupol and the Azov region. Residents of Mariupol and surrounding settlements where Jews lived were buried on it. The article reflects the results of the author's analysis of the Mariupol Jewish cemetery, the history of its origin and functioning, the inscriptions on gravestones as monuments of lapidary epigraphy are read and brought into scientific circulation for the first time. This made it possible to supplement the data on the Mariupol Jewish community, its pre-Soviet state, in particular in the aspect of social stratification of the Jewish community. Key words: Mariupol Jewish community, pre-Soviet period, burial practices and rituals, Jewish necropolis, Azov region.

Caterina Pizzigoni and Camilla Townsend's translation of a set of Nahuatl-language documents represents the 16th volume in Latin American Originals, a series edited by Matthew Restall that presents translations of primary source texts with specialist scholarly apparatus. Colonial-era wills and other forms of mundane documents have long provided scholars a rich source of material to study Indigenous history, notably in the groundbreaking work of the late James Lockhart. The materials in Pizzigoni and Townsend's Indigenous Life after the Conquest are distinctive in this tradition because the records belonged to a single family and were maintained by that family over centuries. As Pizzigoni and Townsend explain in their introduction, the de la Cruz family from the Toluca Valley were elite but not noble. They were the sort of family whose wealth and status grew in the colonial period, much to the chagrin of Indigenous families descendant from the great tlatoque who ruled over central Mexico before the arrival of Europeans. The core set of de la Cruz documents was initially identified by Lockhart in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. He shared transcriptions of the materials with Pizzigoni, who in turn located additional records related to the family in various archives. In this slim volume, Pizzigoni and Townsend present translations of five of these documents accompanied by a robust introduction that provides insight into the multiple generations of family members who produced them.The lengthiest of the texts, the first document is titled “The de la Cruz Family Record Book,” and it, unlike the remaining four documents, is presented initially in Nahuatl as transcribed from the manuscript and then in English translation. Don Pedro de la Cruz began the book in 1647 to keep records of donations he made to local churches. A decade later, around the time that don Pedro assumed the role of gobernador of the altepetl of Tepemaxalco, the book evolved to become a repository of other events related to his community, in the tradition of Nahua historical annals, or xiuhpohualli. This book would be maintained by the family until the nineteenth century. The final entry is in the year 1842, decades after Mexican independence. The document provides an extraordinary window on the daily lived experiences of Nahua elite families during the colonial period. We find records of financial accounts and labor tribute, descriptions of harvests and building projects including evolving repairs and additions to the church, and entries detailing the specific positions that individuals in the community held. The notations are remarkable for the precision with which they capture daily life in an Indigenous community, as the authors recorded events they deemed significant, ranging from an eclipse to the donation of a bell to the church and the purchase of chickens used to entertain guests from Mexico City. The quotidian becomes noteworthy through its sheer consistency and duration.Document 2 provides records for the year 1658 from a tribute roll maintained by don Pedro de la Cruz during his first eight years as governor of Tepemaxalco, from 1657 to 1665. In addition to alphabetic notations of monetary tribute, the document contains a duplicate accounting in non-European pictoglyphic notations that show contributions from each tlaxilacalli, or subdistrict of the altepetl. Document 3 provides the seventeenth-century birth records of members of the de la Cruz family found in the Archivo Parroquial de San Pedro y San Pablo in Calimaya, Mexico. Document 4 is the will of don Pedro de la Cruz, dated 1667, while document 5 is the will of his son-in-law don Juan de la Cruz, dated 1691. Don Juan's will was written with care over a period of time and reflects with great consideration how his assets should be distributed and how his death should be remembered in his church and community. This final document is followed by several brief scholarly supplements, including an epilogue, a note on language and orthography, and a glossary.Renowned experts, Pizzigoni and Townsend bring their knowledge of colonial Nahuatl as well as Nahua cultural and social history to these unique sources. The ancillary materials situate the corpus of colonial-era manuscript records for the reader, while the documents themselves provide a rich depiction of daily life for the de la Cruz family, an Indigenous family whose members held leadership positions in their local community over the course of centuries. In this way, these records attest to the survival and endurance of Indigenous lives and traditions under Hispanic colonial rule.

The author investigates into the history of the main military library of the Russian Empire. In the mid 19-th century, the General Staff Library became one of the largest book depositories in Russia. The author sets the goal to review the main events related to the library during the period when F. F. Kruse and A. N. Petrov were heading the institution. This period was characterized by consistent collection development and collaborations with military historians, and by the new trends of expanding openness of the institution. Owing to the reform by Dmitry Milyutin, Minister of War, the library became accessible for all military personnel a nd, through s pecial o rder, f or c ivilians. T he s ources f or the s tudy a re unpublished materials from the Russian State Military Historical Archive.Based on these sources and literature, the author describes the efforts of the librarians F. F. Kruse and A. N. Petrov, analyzes the internal structure of the institution, the sources for collection development and structure. Despite the fact that the institution was run by professional soldiers – the above-mentioned librarians had a military education, and Petrov even took part in the Crimean War – the library was developed properly and performed efficiently.