Hispanic Societies Research Articles

Paleoparasitological study of Holocene South American camelids (ca. 8970–470 years 14C BP) from an archaeological site, Southern Puna of Argentina (Antofagasta de la Sierra, Catamarca)

South American camelids (SAC) have occupied a central role in the development of Andean societies. They are widely distributed in South America and since ancient times are an important factor in Andean economies and social and ritual life. The archaeological site Punta de Peña 4 (PP4) is located in Antofagasta de la Sierra Basin (Southern Puna of Argentina). PP4 is a rock overhang and presents a large occupational sequence (early Holocene until historic times). The aim of this contribution is to study parasite diversity and the relationship among parasites and SAC through holocenic times in the Southern Puna of Argentina. Besides, differences in parasite egg preservation in the site were discussed. A total of 65 coprolites assigned to SAC were rehydratated, homogenized, filtered, allowed to spontaneous sedimentation and examined for parasite remains. Given the morphology of the coprolites, the biogeographic origin and the presence of coccidian oocysts of Eimeria macusaniensis in some of them, a camelid origin of the coprolites is suggested. This is the first paleoparasitological study from PP4, an archaeological site of Antofagasta de la Sierra, a key region in northwestern Argentina and Central Andes. Eleven taxa of parasites were found belonging to Apicomplexa, Platyhelminthes, and Nematoda. Specific parasite species of SAC were found, such as E. macusaniensis and Lamanema chavezi/Nematodirus lamae. A remarkable finding was the presence of Moniezia sp. and Strongyloides sp. in coprolites from different levels of PP4, pointing out the presence of these genera in native artiodactyls of the region previous to the arrival of Hispanic societies. Results displayed a change in the number of parasite taxa present in SAC through time. The parasite-SAC relation through time and differences in parasite egg preservation between levels and sectors (covered and uncovered) of the site are discussed.

El ascenso criollo y la construcción de la independencia mexicana, una aproximación genealógica

En el presente ensayo se analizarán dos cartas escritas por Ambrosio Eugenio Melgarejo de Santaella dirigidas al Virrey de Nueva España, el Conde de Aranda y al Rey de España, Carlos III, respectivamente en las que solicitaba los favores reales para dejar a sus hijos “lustrosamente establecido[s]”. A partir de la teoría de la genealogía de Foucault, se estudiará el significado de los favores reales dentro del contexto colonial en Nueva España y la importancia del linaje en el establecimiento de una identidad criolla. En estos manuscritos se estudiará en qué medida se da la representación de elementos simbólicos que son clave para la independencia de Nueva España. Además, a partir del estudio de las cartas, se podrá reflexionar sobre el comienzo de algunas de las prácticas que aquejan hoy en día a las sociedades hispanas, tales como son la falta de transparencia de las instituciones públicas o el desequilibrio económico social entre distintos grupos étnicos.

Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500–1830 by Jaime E. Rodríguez O.

Reviewed by: Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500–1830 by Jaime E. Rodríguez O. Abisai Pérez Political Culture in Spanish America, 1500–1830. By Jaime E. Rodríguez O. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Pp. 228. Tables, notes, bibliography, index.) Over the past three decades, the "new political history" has produced a rich scholarship about the emergence and development of the nation-state in Latin America. That historiographical turn, enriched by the postulates of the French linguistic turn and the Cambridge school of conceptual history, has explained in detail the origins and formation of the representative political system in Latin America. One of the major proponents of the new political history is Jaime Rodríguez O., and this book offers a synthesis of his prolific academic trajectory. In this work, Rodríguez explains some fundamental concepts and arguments about Hispanic political culture that are not well acknowledged among Anglophone scholars. The book's eight essays, previously published in Spanish as a single collection, argue that the Hispanic world possessed a common political culture based on the profession of Catholicism and on an imagined social compact between subjects and their king. Rodríguez traced the origins of the Hispanic political culture to Spanish neo-scholastic theorists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who developed the idea that the Spanish monarchy was a conglomerate of realms with rights and political representation and viewed Spanish American territories as kingdoms, not colonies. When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Iberian Peninsula and captured the Spanish royal family in 1808, Spanish subjects appealed to the traditional Hispanic political culture by founding juntas—autonomous governments—in the name of the king. The author makes clear that insurgent movements in Spanish America initially did not seek independence from the Spanish crown but sought more political autonomy according to the traditional discourse of rights and privileges. Amid political turmoil, Spanish subjects on both sides of the Atlantic decided to form a national assembly—the Cortes of Cádiz—that in 1812 created the Cádiz Constitution. Rodríguez states that the Spanish charter gave birth to political representation and mass politics in the Hispanic political culture by creating a representative system based on popular elections. Given that the charter enfranchised the majority of the male population in the Hispanic world, Rodríguez considers it "the most radical charter of the nineteenth century" (9). These essays, based on case studies concerning Mexico and Quito, Ecuador, explain how the Cádiz charter and Spanish political culture shaped Latin American independence and its early national period. The author addresses not only the participation of prominent politicians but also of clerics and indigenous people. Thus, Rodríguez demonstrates how different social groups referred to the traditional political culture [End Page 225] to defend their interests and improve their social position once the Spanish monarchy evolved from an absolutist regime to a constitutional one. Furthermore, Rodríguez emphasizes that the United States' early political system and its independence from monarchy did not influence the actions of Spanish Americans, and that the caudillos—military politicians—emerged not because Hispanic societies inherited an authoritarian culture of dominion, but because they strived to represent a variety of interests, including ordinary people. Rodríguez also reflects on the evolution of Anglophone historiography. He appreciates that in the 1980s and 1990s U.S. scholars abandoned the study of politics because of the rise of subaltern studies and cultural history. The author praises Nettie Lee Benson, who founded one of the most important Latin American studies libraries in the United States and was one of the first historians to identify key aspects of the Hispanic political culture, all much before the advent of the new political history. Hopefully this book will revive interest in the political history of nineteenth-century Spanish America, continuing the work that Benson initiated. Abisai Pérez University of Texas at Austin Copyright © 2018 The Texas State Historical Association

Women's Political Participation in the Dominican Republic: The Case of the Mirabal Sisters

Contrary to traditional perceptions of women's essentially passive role in Hispanic societies, women have often been at the vanguard of popular resistance against dictatorship and military rule. Women have often played a pivotal role in galvanizing public opinion against dictatorship, totalitarianism and state terror. The role of the mothers of the desaparecidos (disappeared) of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina is probably the most dramatic example in recent times. Women have sometimes achieved heroic stature in Hispanic culture in the struggle for social change, from the legendary Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) in the Spanish Civil War, to Evita Peron as standardbearer (abanderada) of the descamisados (shirtless ones) in Argentina, where she is still revered sixty-odd years after her death. Rigoberta Menchu, a Maya Quiche Indian leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her struggle against the Guatemalan military, has become an international symbol of the crusade for human rights. These women are not empty figures, but have become imbued with deep emotive meaning for women, men and youth in their countries, often serving as potent catalysts for change.

Against the Grain: Confronting Hispanic Service Organizations in Times of Increasing Inequalities, 1930 and 2005

In the late 20th century, many college campuses experienced the emergence and flourishing of Hispanic Greek letter societies. Concerned with the concurrent decline in student activism, the author asks, "What is the political significance of Hispanic Greek letter societies on our campuses?" and "Should we, as Latina/o faculty, be concerned about the growing trend toward service organizations?" These questions are placed in the larger historical contexts of White and Black Greek letter societies, Chicana/o-Latina/o political histories in the United States, and socioeconomic inequalities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

La limpieza de sangre en el Colegio de Abogados de Caracas a finales del siglo XVIII

El discurso de la limpieza de sangre es esencial para la comprensión de los valores de las sociedades hispanas de la época colonial. En este artículo se muestra cómo un discurso originado en el continente europeo pasó a ser la base del sistema de estratificación social en el nuevo orden colonial y se analiza el impacto de la transferencia de ideas desde España a las sociedades coloniales, a partir del estudio del Colegio de Abogados de Caracas. El concepto de limpieza de sangre en la provincia de Caracas fue distinto del establecido en la metrópolis. En estas tierras, la limpieza de sangre fue preocupación de todos los grupos sociales que conformaban la provincia durante el siglo XVIII y elemento fundamental para que la élite criolla mantuviera el control de las instituciones civiles y eclesiásticas.

The Chaco Mission Frontier: The Guaycuruan Experience (review)

The Chaco Mission Frontier: The Guaycuruan Experience. By James Scholfield Saeger. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 2000. Pp. xviii, 266. $50.00.) This book adds perspective on the studies of missions in Latin America. Traditionally, most historians have associated missions with institutions in the colonial Spanish American heartlands, where native populations were settled agriculturists. This inquiry expands and nuances these ideas by focusing on the work of Catholic friars working among the non-sedentary (or semi-nomadic) Guaycuruan hunter-gatherers of the Gran Chaco. They constituted people who valued war and scorned farmers like the Guarani. In seven detailed chapters and a conclusion, Saeger presents, wherever the sources permit, the Guaycuruan (a term applied to Abipones, Mocobis, Mbayas, the Toba, Pilaga, and others) perspectives on missions and the negotiated conditions under which they were accepted in the eighteenth century. In the absence of a written Guaycuruan language, Saeger reconstructs Guaycuruan history and their lifeways from contact in the 1500's to the coming of the missions in the 1740's and into the twentieth century, based on records left by their enemies and tutors and assumes that Guaycuruans spoke most clearly through their behavior (p. xiii). The analysis of their lifeways focuses on change and continuities over time. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Guaycuruan groups exhibited no political organization or loyalty above the band, although they shared a common language.They defined themselves partly in opposition to the Hispanic societies with whom they fought, plundered, and traded. They were led by hereditary chiefs with limited authority. Among the Mocobis, for example, chiefs won influence from powerful oratory with which to persuade and win adherents, brave deeds, and good decisions. And, although such a decentralized structure might suggest weakness, in fact it prevented Spanish forces from capturing the one person who at least symbolically signaled the defeat of them all. Over the years the settling of the area by the Spanish resulted in wars, disease, and ecological degradation, and increasing pressure on hunting and other resources. Guaycuruans adjusted by adopting the horse; raising cattle; using iron hatchets and knives (which in the long run ruined palm groves); replacing war as an economic activity with trade; accepting the concept of private property and the market economy; becoming sedentary; adopting agriculture; learning trades, converting to Catholicism; and embracing sobriety. By the late twentieth century, most of the Guaycuruans had lost their land, language, and identity. In the conclusions, Saeger compares and contrasts his findings with the standard view of the mission, as presented by David Sweet's synthesis. Like the stereotype, missionaries to the Guaycuruan attempted to change food habits; introduce new conceptions of time; make the natives into unwaged rural proletarians; teach the Guaycuruan to work as domestic servants and ranch hands; and, in general, replace native customs with Hispanic ones. …

A Case Study in Folktale Analysis: AT 514, "The Shift of Sex," in Hispanic Societies

A Case Study in Folktale Analysis: AT 514, "The Shift of Sex," in Hispanic Societies

Inventing High and Low: Literature, Mass Culture and Uneven Modernity in Spain (review)

Reviewed by: Inventing High and Low: Literature, Mass Culture and Uneven Modernity in Spain Catherine Jagoe Stephanie Sieburth. Inventing High and Low: Literature, Mass Culture and Uneven Modernity in Spain. Durham: Duke UP, 1994. xiii + 280 pp. Is popular culture a stultifying opium of the masses? The argument is a familiar one: “low” culture stands for passivity, decline, corruption, consumption, sameness, superficiality, banality, cliché, imitation, prostitution, mass production, capitalism, and the machine. Mass cultural forms are hastening the demise of “high” culture, bastion of a beleaguered elite and refuge of art, uniqueness, complexity, craftsmanship, value, individuality, authenticity, virility, agency, beauty, depth, and reflection. Stephanie Sieburth’s refreshing book lays bare the extraordinarily long and complex history of the high/low culture opposition and robustly denies its intellectual validity. She prods us to abandon our entrenched Western habit of judging cultural production on a vertical instead of a horizontal scale. To prove her point, she delves into some fascinating instances of the culture wars in action in four Spanish novels, two from the 1880s and two from 1970s. As she shows, the four split into two pairs ideologically, but the pairing crosses temporal boundaries in an unexpected way. In all four works, popular culture occupies a central role both thematically and formally, making them what Sieburth terms “mass cultural novels.” Two of the works examined, Galdós’s La desheredada (The Disinherited Woman, 1881) and Juan Goytisolo’s Reivindicación del conde don Julián (Count Julian, 1970), present an apocalyptic vision of mass culture, while the other two, Galdós’s Tormento (Torment, 1884) and Martín Gaite’s El cuarto de atrás (The Back Room, 1978), are more utopian in attitude. Mass cultural novels, Sieburth argues, are especially numerous in Hispanic societies, notably Argentina, but their presence has been little studied in the case of modern Spain, except as echoes of the Quijote. To explain their prevalence she offers an analysis of Spain’s “uneven modernity” during the periods studied, characterizing it as a society in which pockets of preindustrialism and capitalism coexist in economics, politics, and occupational patterns. This premise then leads her to link the late nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries in Spain as similarly experiencing a period of unparalleled growth and modernization (particularly visible in the cities), together with authoritarian rule that resulted from the failure of the First and Second Republics. Sieburth has chosen four incredibly rich texts, both pairs written [End Page 904] within a few years of each other, and the nineteenth-century pair, intriguingly, by the same author. Inventing High and Low is as saturated with fascinating ideas as the works it studies. Sometimes the strands are so dense that the author provides diagrams to help chart the way through. She provides some well-documented historical analysis of modernization in Spain and moves comfortably among an eclectic range of theoretical sources, including Raymond Williams, Gramsci, Andreas Huyssen, Stallybrass and White, Unamuno, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Frye, Judith Walkowitz, Nancy Armstrong, Janice Radway, Fredric Jameson, Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer. While it could be objected that her argument about the effects of the unevenly modern city on Spanish cultural production would be buttressed more effectively if one of the nineteenth-century texts had been by a second author and if more readings of actual nineteenth-century mass cultural texts were included, this book is so consistently brilliant and so eminently readable that it will stimulate other scholars to undertake such studies. The introduction analyzes different meanings of culture, class, and art, showing how the semantic shift from culture understood as a process of cultivation of the land to culture as intellectual state does not register in Spanish dictionaries until the 1890s. In her studies of the novels, she bypasses the issue of authorial intent which continues to dog Spanish literary studies by foregrounding the narrators’ views and histories and not those of the authors. Sieburth reads La desheredada as a reflection on the role of the novel in an age where new technologies confront the novelist with a dizzying range of mechanical reproductions; Tormento as a critique both of the realist and the romance mode; Reivindicación as a misogynistic attempt to repress the...

Fathering and the Cultural Construction of Brothers in Two Hispanic Societies

Psychoanalytic theorists (Bettelheim 1977:105-106, 236-277; Spiro 1982:98-101) interpret the representation of siblings in myths and popular folktales as symbolic recastings of parent-child relations. Spiro (1982:98-101) observed that male sibling rivalry in myths is an expression of male oedipal rivalry where the brother as well as the father appear as obstacles to monopolizing the mother's affections. This paper describes and explains contrasting representations of male siblings in similar folktales in two different cultures in the Hispanic world. It argues that representations of brothers in popular folktales told by Cfaceres (Spain) and Nahuat (Mexico) villagers vary according to the father's relationship with his sons. I contend that Cgaceres fathers play a relatively minor role in caring for infant children and, consequently, reproduce in their sons weaker abilities (Chodorow 1978:169) that storytellers represent by depicting brothers as autonomous and hoardingrather than sharing their wealth-and as sexual rivals. The comparatively reduced relational capacities are part of nuclear family

Gender segregation and cultural constructions of sexuality in two Hispanic societies

Cáceres villagers in Spain and Sierra Nahuat villagers in Mexico separate men from women according to each culture's particular construction of sexuality. This article explains the differing degrees of gender segregation in the two groups by examining sexual beliefs expressed in popular folktales. Comparison of the Cáceres and Sierra Nahuat cases suggests that sexual beliefs justifying gender segregation have their antecedents in early childhood and develop according to the organizational requirements of the system of production. [gender segregation, sexual beliefs, family organization, Spain, Nahua of Mexico]

Self-Help as Mutual Protection: The Development of Hispanic Fraternal Benefit Societies

Research on self-help groups is plentiful yet published material on the origins, development and expansion of self-help groups organized by Hispanics to serve Hispanics remains scarce, as does material on fraternal benefit societies with ethnic, religious, or vocational bases. In this article, the author reports a test of three models advanced by Lieberman and Borman in a JABS special issue (1976) to explain the formation of self-help groups: the functionalist framework alternative pathways, and afflictive bond models. The history, ideologies, and activities of three Hispanic fraternal benefit societies were examined The findings support the explanatory power of Lieberman and Borman's three models; but indicate a fourth reason for the formation of self-help groups: mutual protection. The author concludes by calling for comparative studies to build a context for more empirical research on self-help groups organized as fraternal benefit societies, and for collaboration between policy makers and practitioners and such societies.

Noviazgo in an Andalusian Pueblo

Previous articleNext article No AccessNoviazgo in an Andalusian PuebloSally Price and Richard PriceSally Price Search for more articles by this author and Richard Price Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 22, Number 3Autumn, 1966 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/soutjanth.22.3.3629375 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (1945-1972), which is continued by the Journal of Anthropological Research (1973-present). Copyright 1966 Department of Anthropology, The University of New MexicoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:JAMES M. TAGGART Gender segregation and cultural constructions of sexuality in two Hispanic societies, American Ethnologist 19, no.11 (Oct 2009): 75–96.https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1992.19.1.02a00050L. A. Sawchuk Historical Intervention, Tradition, and Change: A Study of the Age at Marriage in Gibraltar, 1909–1983, Journal of Family History 17, no.11 (Jan 1992): 69–94.https://doi.org/10.1177/036319909201700104JANE F. COLLIER from Mary to modern woman: the material basis of Marianismo and its transformation in a Spanish village, American Ethnologist 13, no.11 (Oct 2009): 100–107.https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1986.13.1.02a00060H. V. C. Harris SEXUAL ATTRACTION: A TEST CASE OF SOCIOBIOLOGICAL THEORY, Zygon� 19, no.33 (Sep 1984): 317–330.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.1984.tb00933.xAbraham Iszaevich Emigrants, spinsters and priests: The dynamics of demography in Spanish peasant societies, The Journal of Peasant Studies 2, no.33 (Feb 2008): 292–312.https://doi.org/10.1080/03066157508437937Louise E. Sweet, Kathryn Lattimer Introductory Bibliographies on Circum-Mediterranean Peasantry-III, Behavior Science Notes 3, no.11 (Sep 2016): 55–61.https://doi.org/10.1177/106939716800300102