Set in present-day Buenos Aires, the film Sudor frío (2010, dir. Adrián García Bogliano) features two former agents of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional who continue to imprison zombified abductees from the Dirty War of the 1970s and 1980s in their decrepit house of horrors, where they also capture and torture newer generations of Argentine youth who are disconnected from the historical violence of the dictatorship and are supposedly disenchanted with politics in general. Stunted in their normative development as young citizens toward traditional benchmarks like employment, home ownership, and procreation, their suspension in time can be read as zombiesque, allowing for the blurring of differences between generations. The distinct ways in which they have become frozen in time hold the potential to engender a kind of temporal critique that calls into question not only the national progress that has been made since the return to democracy, but also the prescriptive timeline that defines individual progress according to the logic of the neoliberal economy left intact since the last dictatorship.

Paradoxically, in Colombia, whose past and present time are marked by the continuous waves of violence, the crime or noir fiction is a marginal subgenre. In fact, it has never appeared in its orthodox form in Colombian literature. The genre, which for some decades has served as a recurrent instrument to focus on the complicated and violent reality of modern societies, in contemporary Colombian fiction is subject to constant reinvention and perpetual hybridization. One of the authors recognized within this field of artistic production is Mario Mendoza (1964). The article studies his novel Lady Massacre (2013) with the aim of observing how Mendoza manages the traditional ingredients of the crime fiction (the crime, the detective, the investigation, the resolution of the enigma, and the social background) to reinvent the genre in the Colombian context.

The Argentine artist José Muñoz and writer Carlos Sampayo began publishing their Alack Sinner detective comic in the Italian magazine Alterlinus in 1974, after which its stories appeared in French, Spanish, Argentinian, and US publications. Beginning in 2015, the complete Alack Sinner was republished in several languages, winning over a new generation of readers and critics. In the fourth tale, “Vietblues” (1975), Muñoz and Sampayo liberated their storytelling from the limitations of pastiche and formula to challenge the genre conventions of the “private detective” crime narrative. The comic, set in New York City, foregrounds a white protagonist who refuses to partner with a group of Black nationalists intent on tearing down racist power structures. This article shows how the comic explores two definitions of history and political action: an idealistic, subjective, and individualistic one, and a more historical vision predicated on connections between oppressed groups. Muñoz and Sampayo argue for the possibility of interethnic solidarity while documenting their protagonist’s inability to successfully act on that promise. Key to the analysis are Muñoz and Sampayo’s treatment of race and the ways their white protagonist depoliticizes the African American experience by projecting it into himself as a dream state.

Abstract This article examines the case of La Palmada en la Frente (1970), a one-issue political cartoon magazine, drawn and written by cartoonist Lugoze and produced in the context of a scare camp...

Abstract Tiburcio Gonzalez Rojas (birth date unknown) worked as a small-time jobbing photographer in the mid-twentieth century in the area around Ypacarai, southeast of Asuncion, where he specializ...

This article analyzes the presence of Lincoln Kirstein (famous founder of the American Ballet and MoMA advisor) in Argentina during 1941 and 1942, first as director of the Caravan Ballet and then as a specialist sent by MoMA. Studies on the cultural activities and US government projects for Latin America during the Good Neighbor policy have overlooked some crucial personalities involved in the construction and dissemination of this policy. The Good Neighborhood Tours played a central role in spreading the idea of American friendship. Cultural networks were organized around this idea. Lincoln Kirstein, a character of enormous reputation in the cultural circles of the United States, participated actively in the strategies of the American government and, while he carried out the acquisition of Latin American paintings and artworks, he also helped to forge a concept of Latin American art in the United States.

Abstract This work analyzes the visual representation that formed part of the electoral campaign of Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for the primary and parliamentary ele...

This article analyzes the creative contributions to counterrevolutionary criticism in Venezuelan popular music (2002–2018). I examine how these musical productions reclaim discourses previously controlled by political power. From the working-class neighborhoods of cities such as Caracas and Maracay—Chavista territories par excellence—the emergence of a radical street consciousness bluntly attacks the symbolic apparatus of the Revolution. In this context, these cultural products question the government’s fight for social justice and equality. In the study of the musical representation of political dissent, I focus on denunciations of a failed state, portrayals of socioeconomic tribulations, and possible solutions to the national crisis.

This article looks at “Torres gemelas,” a YouTube video by Ecuadorian indigenous musician Delfín Quishpe, which went viral in the late 2000s, reaching millions of views. I argue that this video, and associated phenomena, can be considered a paradigmatic example of how some contemporary indigenous creators are radically redefining their relationship with globalized and localized cultures in a context of unprecedented technological change and timespace compression. By refusing to cleave to expectations about Amerindian media production as political and collective or as an expression of ancestral and traditional indigeneity, these Andean creators are challenging established views regarding how they should participate in modernity and the digital world. At the same time, white audiences’ consumption of Delfín’s video (and similar media products) as kitsch (or “bad taste”) also points toward the deployment of racist discourse in the definition of indigenous cultural production—particularly when there is a deliberate discrepancy with mainstream society’s expectations about Amerindianness. Rather than arguing against the kitsch nature of “Torres gemelas” and comparable media productions, the article proposes to critically appropriate the term in order to address how these new cultural products are subject to symbolic violence, and yet at the same time have the potential to articulate anti-racist strategies.