La Mano Research Articles

Analyzing the Artistic Characteristics and Vocal Performance of Don Giovanni and Zerlina's Duet "Là ci darem la mano" in the Opera Don Giovanni

“Là ci darem la mano” is excerpted from Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni”, which premiered in 1787. This duet, featuring the baritone Don Giovanni and the soprano Zerlina, masterfully portrays the distinct personalities and emotional transformations of the two characters. The article delves into the background of the opera “Don Giovanni” and provides character analyses of the male protagonist, Don Giovanni, and the country lass, Zerlina. It further examines the artistic characteristics of the duet “Là ci darem la mano,” drawing on personal vocal performance experience for a comprehensive analysis and an overall assessment, followed by further contemplation.

‘Il disagio di stare al mondo’: Coming of Age, Masculinity, and Maradona in Paolo Sorrentino’s È stata la mano di Dio

ABSTRACT With È stata la mano di Dio (2021), Paolo Sorrentino returned to filming in Naples, his hometown, 20 years after his first movie. Going back home is a moment of rupture in his production. ‘È stata la mano di Dio represents for the first time in my career an intimate and personal film’, Sorrentino explains. In this article I argue that the movie offers a self-reflexive reading of his origins as a director celebrating the primacy of Diego Armando Maradona’s influence on his work. Focusing on the protagonist Fabietto, Sorrentino’s cinematic alter ego, I examine the entanglements of his coming of age as a young man and the spectacle of Maradona’s transnational heroism, which inspires Fabietto’s decision to become a director. As a model of creativity and perseverance, Maradona illuminates the cinematic dialogue that Sorrentino establishes with his Neapolitan mentor Antonio Capuano and the Italian cinematic tradition embodied by Federico Fellini.

The presence of an absence: Framing capital in Mercado de futuros/Futures Market (Álvarez 2011), La mano invisible/The Invisible Hand (Macián 2016) and Cerca de tu casa/Near your Home (Cortés 2016)

The extensive bibliography devoted to Spanish austerity tends to centre on representations of a suffering population, Spanish politics or the legacy of the Transition to democracy. Invoking Fredric Jameson’s concept of cognitive mapping, this article argues that Mercado de futuros/Futures Market (Álvarez 2011), La mano invisible/The Invisible Hand (Macián 2016) and Cerca de tu casa/Near Your Home (Cortés 2016) expose capitalism’s responsibility for creating the crisis and propose alternative critical responses. These three films synecdochally identify housing, labour relations and the media as ideal battlegrounds on which to confront capital, while presenting affect as an asset open for all. All three films deny capital the status of an incontestable totality: Mercado alludes to a world beyond capitalism while Mano and Cerca adduce populist antagonisms to its long-standing hegemony. These texts reveal their vocation as cinematic critical pedagogies, producing political subjects on-screen in order to generate them in an array of off-screen contexts.

Entre la distopía y la heterotopía: espacios de la crisis en las novelas de Isaac Rosa

This paper analyses urban spaces of crisis in Isaac Rosa’s novels La mano invisible (2011), La habitación oscura (2013), and the graphic novel Aquí vivió. Historia de un desahucio (2016) by Cristina Bueno and Isaac Rosa. It explores the dystopian and realistic elements in Rosa’s fiction and proposes to read his works through the lens of Michel Foucault’s essay on other spaces. The article argues that the unusual, quasi-dystopian spaces are of a double nature, typical for heterotopias, and play a significant role in the manner in which Rosa depicts the consequences of the economic crisis in Spain at the beginning of the 21st century.aper analyses urban spaces of crisis in Isaac Rosa’s novels La mano invisible (2011), La habitación oscura (2013), and the graphic novel Aquí vivió. Historia de un desahucio (2016) by Cristina Bueno and Isaac Rosa. It explores the dystopian and realistic elements in Rosa’s fiction and proposes to read his works through the lens of Michel Foucault’s essay on other spaces. The article argues that the unusual, quasi-dystopian spaces are of a double nature, typical for heterotopias, and play a significant role in the manner in which Rosa depicts the consequences of the economic crisis in Spain at the beginning of the 21st century.

Violencia de género, pobladoras y feminismo popular: Casa Yela, Talca (1964–2010)

Hillary Hiner has written a book that is remarkable in many ways, a work that historians, anthropologists, feminists, and other social scientists will realize that they have been in need of. This book is about gender violence and other types of violence against women in Talca, Chile, before and after the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. It focuses on the role of the Yela group, organized in 1986 by women for women who experienced violence. In 1995, they got money from a nongovernmental organization to buy a house that they named Casa Yela, one of the first shelters for women survivors of violence in Chile. Up until Casa Yela closed in 2010, its members worked with other feminists fighting against gender violence. Hiner's book is a sort of microhistory that gives the reader a broader picture of violence against women not only in Talca but also in the surrounding Maule region and, indeed, Chile as a whole. This book makes a vital contribution to the historiography on violence against women.To tell the story of Casa Yela, Hiner interviewed women who stayed there and women who organized the Yela group before the shelter's founding. She also examines newspapers from Santiago, Talca, and the Maule region, personal archives, and documents from the Archivo de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad to give a broad yet detailed reconstruction of gender violence. By analyzing the case of Casa Yela, Hiner examines Chilean politics and power relations as well as women's resistance to both.This study deals with three main arguments, which are developed throughout the book. First, gender violence must be constructed and understood within the context of the specific society and state in which it occurs. Second, specific states define what is considered legitimate and illegitimate gender violence. The state's determinations influence social attitudes and vice versa, both of which extend into the private sphere. Third, violence is not confined to the home, just as violence exercised by common citizens is never really private, because violence draws on and generates perceptions and discussions in the public sphere. Therefore, as Hiner says, “violence is a political problem” (p. 25).In order to illustrate these points, the first chapter studies how women in Talca lived and experienced violence in the fundos and dwellings during the turbulent years of the agrarian reforms (1964–73). The second, covering the years from 1973 to 1988, explores women's opposition to gender violence and their idea of establishing a shelter to fight it. The last chapter covers the period from the transition to democracy in 1988 until Casa Yela closed its doors in 2010. During these years the Yela group's members joined feminist networks and began to participate in state institutions. They were named the pioneras in the fight against domestic and sexual violence (p. 215).In addition to discussing violence against women in Chile, Hiner offers a penetrating analysis of the history and historiography of gender and feminism in Chile. She points out that while Chilean historians employed Joan Scott's insight into “gender as a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes,” it was not until the 2010s that the second part of Scott's definition of gender, as “a primary way of signifying relationships of power,” was employed to discuss and understand gender, bringing fresh debates among Chilean feminist historians (pp. 32–33). Hiner also pays special attention to the term gender violence, providing a thorough evaluation of its historiographical and anthropological definitions. Both approaches place this book within the most recent debates of the field.As noted, the author conducted several interviews that allowed her to discover thought-provoking experiences of women of the bajo pueblo, which otherwise had been impossible to obtain. One such woman was Irene, who left her husband because he abused her sexually and verbally and moved with her children to Casa Yela. With lengthy excerpts from Hiner's various interviews included in the book, the reader learns about these women's experiences of violence through their own words; for example, Marcela tells, “Ahí se agachó, pescó la motosierra, me cortó en la cabeza primero, después me cortó la mano” (p. 245).In sum, this is a rich book that uses the case of Casa Yela to bring violence and gender violence center stage in Chilean history. In doing so, Hiner refreshes terms such as feminisms and gender; she also does this by analyzing recent publications and offering thoughtful ways to understand the terms' application in Latin America. Although the book addresses a difficult subject, the writing is clear and enjoyable, something that is sometimes hard to find in our field.

To Africanize Spain: Twentieth-Century Spanish Poetry and the Persistent Forms of al-Andalus

To Africanize Spain: Twentieth-Century Spanish Poetry and the Persistent Forms of al-Andalus

Acercamiento a la prosa de intensidades de Alberto Ruy Sánchez desde la razón poética de María Zambrano

Se presenta un acercamiento a la prosa de intensidades de Alberto Ruy Sánchez con la finalidad de analizarla desde la razón poética de María Zambrano. Se toma en consideración la obra del Quinteto de Mogador, la cual está compuesta por cinco libros: Nueve veces el asombro, Los nombres del aire, En los labios del agua, Los jardines secretos de Mogador y La mano del fuego. Se hace énfasis en esta escritura propuesta por Ruy Sánchez donde la intensidad se vive a cada momento. Se explica la manera en que poesía y pensamiento se unen para revelar una realidad colmada de asombro, en la que se revela la entrega del poeta enamorado, quien todo lo espera, tal como los personajes de esta obra.

Evaluating a citizen security pilot in Honduras: The economic benefits of a much reduced murder rate

AbstractMotivationDuring the 2010s Honduras reported some of the highest rates of violent urban crime anywhere in the world. Before the 2010s, the government tried to control crime using heavy policing and sentencing (la mano dura), but with little apparent effect on alarming and rising rates of urban crime. This led to a switch to working with communities to make urban spaces safer, to change attitudes among young people vulnerable to perpetrating and suffering violent crime, and to encouraging secondary school students to remain in school.PurposeThe article assesses the success of the 2013–2019 pilot, Ciudades Seguras (Safe Cities), in three large municipalities. The project aimed at integrating crime prevention, social investment and municipal capacity building across the national and subnational administrations.Approaches and methodsThe project was designed with no regard to impact evaluation, without an adequate baseline, without controls. Hence, we develop a simple ex‐post cost–benefit analysis (CBA) that updates an ex‐ante CBA. Our approach has two advantages: (1) it provides rigorous estimates of the project’s impacts from assessing counterfactuals, data, and plausible individual and social benefits; and (2) it helps assess the quality of the original ex‐ante CBA estimates.FindingsReliable data on project impact is incomplete. Two findings, however, are striking. In the three cities, homicides fell dramatically from more than 850 per annum to below 500, against a projection of rates rising to 900 per annum. The other is that, contrary to programme plans, school dropout rates actually increased. The value of fewer murders outweighed disappointments on school retention. The benefit–cost ratio is estimated to be 1.75, higher than the ex‐ante estimate of the project. The value of the pilot remains unchanged when we include calculations from incomplete and/or unreliable data on sexual violence, injuries, thefts, and school dropout.Policy ImplicationsTwo conclusions can be drawn from this article. First, that Ciudades Seguras achieved great success in reducing murder rates, showing how working with communities to make cities safer and changing attitudes and expectations can work, when heavier policing does not. Second, that it is possible to assess the economic benefits derived from such programmes, even when adequate measures for subsequent evaluation were not included in the design of the pilot. [Correction added on 20 May 2021, after initial online publication: Abstract section has been updated in this version.]

Megaproyectos y conflictos ecoterritoriales. El caso del Tren Maya

Al amparo de la globalización neoliberal, actualmente los procesos de despojo transforman de manera recurrente territorios indígenas en América Latina. En este artículo, se propone analizar la oposición que se da entre estas prácticas de acumulación por desposesión de las empresas transnacionales (ETN) y las cosmovisiones de los pueblos originarios a través del análisis de los conflictos ecoterritoriales. Tomando el concepto de Rocío Silva Santisteban, se trata de conflictos que nacen de la pugna por el uso y gestión del territorio, entendiendo territorio como concepto holístico, donde interaccionan múltiples violencias. El objetivo de este artículo será desgranar el choque entre estas dos visiones antagónicas del mundo de la mano de perspectivas como la ecología-mundo de Jason W. Moore, que permitirá leer los megaproyectos como un producto más del capitalismo que explota sistémicamente seres humanos y naturaleza al servicio de la acumulación, o el ecofeminismo, que aportará luz a la interdependencia entre territorios y cuerpos como espacios vulnerables. Asimismo, se tomará como ejemplo el caso del Tren Maya, el megaproyecto estrella del actual presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, para evidenciar el falso desarrollo que promete la obra ferroviaria para el sureste del país en el marco de la llamada Cuarta Transformación. A través de este conflicto ecoterritorial, que ha despertado la oposición de movimientos sociales e indígenas, se plasmará este choque de visiones y se corroborará el avance de las fronteras extractivas gracias, entre otros aspectos, a la vulneración de derechos humanos como el derecho a consulta del Convenio 169 de la OIT. Por último, el artículo invitará a mirar el Tren Maya desde una mirada de las cartografías críticas, que lo interrelacionarán con proyectos mayores y que revelarán México como un país laboratorio de los tratados de comercio internacional que han propiciado la expansión de megaproyectos en el país.

El aprendizaje-servicio como pedagogía durante la pandemia. El proyecto “UCA te da la Mano”

espanolLa Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina (UCA) se ha propuesto articular y complementar la formacion academica brindada a sus alumnos con una opcion de vida autentica, que los mueva a construir un mundo mas justo dando respuestas a las demandas sociales de los sectores vulnerables de la sociedad. A partir de la pandemia ocasionada por el COVID-19, la UCA ha trabajado para dar respuesta a algunas de las nuevas problematicas que hoy nos afectan. En esa linea se fueron desarrollando estrategias que nos permitieron continuar trabajando con la comunidad aun durante el periodo de aislamiento social, preventivo y obligatorio. En el marco del Programa ”UCA + Comunidad en epoca de pandemia” surge el proyecto “UCA te da la Mano”, realizado conjuntamente por el Departamento de Psicologia de la Facultad de Psicologia y Psicopedagogia y la Direccion de Compromiso Social y Extension de la Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina, el cual tiene el doble objetivo de brindar un espacio de reflexion y orientacion para el personal de primera linea de respuesta y ser un espacio de aprendizaje para los alumnos de la carrera de psicologia. Participan de ella, docentes, graduados y alumnos. EnglishOne of the main objectives of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina (UCA) is to articulate and complement the academic training provided to its students with an authentic lifestyle choice , that would encourage them to build a fairer world by responding to the specific social demands coming from vulnerable sectors of society. The university has thus worked to respond to some of the new problems that now affect us as a society due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, strategies have been developed to allow us to continue working with the community even during this period of social, preventive and compulsory isolation. Within the framework of the program ‘UCA + Comunidad en epoca de pandemia’ (UCA + Community in times of a pandemic), UCA has developed a project that we will discuss in this paper: ‘UCA te da la mano’ (UCA gives you a hand). The project, was jointly carried out by the Department of Psychology of the Faculty of Psychology and Psychopedagogy and the Directorate of Social Commitment and Outreach of the UCA, and it had a dual objective: providing a space for reflection and orientation for first-line response personnel and becoming a learning space for psychology students.

Estructura, poesía, totalidad y fragmento en Machu Picchu y La mano desasida (¿1954?-1980) de Martín Adán. Aproximaciones hacia una nueva edición

A partir de uno de sus viajes al Cusco, el poeta Martín Adán establece una oposición entre lo feble y la fortaleza, y traza una línea divisoria entre Lima y el Cusco. Es en este periodo que se da un cambio temático y de forma verbal en su obra con la publicación del primer fragmento de La mano desasida en 1961, cuyo referente es el Santuario de Machu Picchu. así la problemática de la totalidad y el fragmento desde sus correlatos textual y arqueológico. Esto como una forma de entender la vastedad del archivo que comprende al poema, el propio referente del canto, Machu Picchu, y otras estructuras prehispánicas: su carácter de patrimonio arqueológico inmueble, y considerando, al mismo tiempo, cómo son entendidas desde la poesía.

An estranged gaze at the world of work: La mano invisible (Isaac Rosa 2011; David Macián 2016)

This article analyses the unusual representation of work and workers in the novel La mano invisible (Isaac Rosa 2011) and its cinematic version (David Macián 2016). It explores how Rosa and Macián challenge the hegemonic invisibility of labour and labourers in the collective imagination of Spanish society by materializing not only the invisible hand of the workers behind the production of commodities and the supply of services, but also the invisible hand behind labour relations in a neo-liberal society. These representations are also analysed in their context of production and reception: post-industrial Europe and, more specifically, post-2008 crisis Spain.

Gothic Childbearing, Monstrous Reproduction, and a Science Fiction Turn: Rosario Ferré’s “La muñeca menor” and Pedro Cabiya’s “Relato del piloto”

The thirty years between the 1972 publication of Rosario Ferré’s short story “La muñeca menor” and Pedro Cabiya’s 2003 novella “Relato del piloto que dijo adiós con la mano” span the cultural, political, and economic “shift” from a “regulatory state” to a neoliberal global order that, per Rebekah Sheldon’s analysis, has articulated and contextualized similar contrasting takes on biological and material reproduction. Focusing on their transformed imaginary of “monstrous” reproduction, I explore in this paper how the texts’ Gothic and SF modalizations refract local conditions as well as critical elements of that shift, full of increasingly urgent and extreme consequences in Puerto Rico, and even farther afield.

Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion by Christine Lee Gengaro

Reviewed by: Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion by Christine Lee Gengaro Laura Pita Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion. By Christine Lee Gengaro. (The Listener's Companion.) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. [xxiv, 181 p. ISBN 9781442260863 (hardcover), $42; ISBN 9781442260870 (e-book), $39.50.] Timeline, glossary, bibliography, discography, index. Christine Lee Gengaro's Experiencing Chopin: A Listener's Companion appears nearly simultaneously with two other books on Chopin: Alan Walker's comprehensive biography Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2018) and the essay collection Chopin and His World (ed. Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017]), which brings together a substantial group of Chopin scholars. Experiencing Chopin is Gengaro's first publication on nineteenth-century music, as her principal area of research is film music and music in popular culture. (An earlier book is Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013].) With Experiencing Chopin, Gengaro explores the niche of critical literature for the nonspecialist. The book belongs to the Listener's Companion series, which provides readers "a deeper understanding of pivotal musical genres and the creative work of … iconic composers and performers." This task is accomplished by placing readers "in specific listening experiences in which the music is examined in its historical context with regard to both compositional and societal parameters" (p. ix). Experiencing Chopin is organized into ten chapters, supplemented by a timeline, a glossary of musical terms, and selected readings and listening lists. Most of the chapters use biography as a context to discuss a set of pieces, usually from a specific genre. Chapter 1, "The [End Page 473] Piano Lesson," examines Chopin's etudes in relation to his experiences as a music student in Poland and as a teacher in Paris. Chapter 2, "Chopin's Concert Life," deals with Chopin's performances from his years as a child prodigy through adulthood and the composition of the two piano concertos. Chapter 3, "Confidants and Collaborators," explores Chopin's relationships with some of his Polish mates and close friends in Paris while commenting on his collaborative work with Auguste Franchomme on the Grand duo concertant sur des thèmes de Robert le diable and his Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor. Chapter 4, "Creative Nocturnes," looks at Chopin's stay in Vienna in 1830 and the influence of John Field on his nocturnes, while chapter 5, "Devotion to Poland," considers Chopin's mazurkas and polonaises in the light of his nationalism. The ballades and Chopin's relationship with George Sand are the focus of chapter 6, "Love, Chopin Style." Chapter 7, "Chopin and the Voice," discusses Chopin's songs in the context of his fondness for vocal music and his association with the poets Stefan Witwicki and Adam Mickiewicz. In chapter 8, "Musical Inheritance," Gengaro observes the influence of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on Chopin's preludes and the variations on "La ci darem la mano." As part of an examination of his piano sonata, chapter 9, "Maladies among the Melodies," presents various theories on Chopin's fragile health and the cause of his death. The last chapter, "Modern Chopin," offers a study of the endurance of Chopin's legacy in popular culture as reflected in the use of his music in cartoons and his presence as a character in films and video games. Gengaro's book is not a standard text of music history and criticism but rather an investigation of both Chopin's artistic and mundane self—a "portrait of an actual man, touched by genius" (p. xv). The author makes clear from the beginning that her aim is to use the historical contexts of creation and reception, and musical commentary on the pieces, to connect readers with Chopin's musical world and thus inspire them "to sit back and really listen" (p. xv). In doing so, she draws from historical facts and quotes extensively from correspondence and other personal sources—by Chopin, his lovers, friends, and students—while also indulging "in some invention and speculation" (p. xv). Whether Gengaro has been successful in such a venture is not easy to answer...

Rotura del tendón extensor del dedo de la mano. ¿Un efecto secundario del tratamiento con estatinas?

Evaluar el grado de cumplimiento de las recomendaciones de las guías de práctica clínica (GPC) en el diagnóstico y seguimiento de las principales complicaciones crónicas vasculares de los pacientes con diabetes tipo 2 (DM2) en atención primaria (AP).Estudio descriptivo transversal retrospectivo en pacientes de 18 o más años de edad seleccionados consecutivamente a medida que acudieron a la consulta en AP. Los datos de los pacientes se obtuvieron mediante acceso a la historia informatizada, registrándose variables clínicas y analíticas de interés. Se consideró adecuada la determinación y el registro de microalbuminuria (MALB), filtrado glomerular (FG), exploración pies (palpación pulsos, monofilamento o diapasón) y electrocardiograma (ECG) si habían sido realizados de manera anual, y del fondo de ojo (FO) cada dos años.Se incluyó a 1.420 pacientes (55,8% varones), con una edad media (DE) de 70,6 (10,8) años y una media de 9,3 (6,2) años de evolución de su diabetes. El índice de masa corporal (IMC) medio (kg/m2) fue de 30,1 (5,4) en mujeres y de 29,5 (4,7) en varones (p = 0,023) y la HbA1c (%), de 6,9 (1,2). El buen control metabólico de la DM se alcanzó en el 63,0% (IC 95%: 60,4-65,5). Tenían realizado FO en los dos últimos años 976 pacientes (68,7%; IC 95%: 66,2-71,1). La MALB se había realizado a 1.228 pacientes (86,5%; IC 95%: 84,6-88,2), el FG estimado a 1.391 (98,0%; IC 95%: 97,1-98,6), la exploración de los pulsos del pie a 626 (44,1%; IC 95%: 41,5-46,7) y la exploración neurológica a 473 (33,3%; IC 95%: 30,8-35,8).Los resultados de nuestro estudio indican que en una proporción importante de los pacientes con DM2 no se explora la presencia de retinopatía ni de neuropatía. A siete de cada diez pacientes se les ha cribado de retinopatía, uno de cada tres tiene realizada exploración neurológica y uno de cada cuatro tiene realizadas todas las exploraciones recomendadas por las GPC.To evaluate the level of compliance to the clinical practice guidelines (CPG) recommendations for the diagnosis and monitoring of the main chronic vascular complications of patients with type 2 diabetes (DM2) in Primary Care (PC).A retrospective cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on patients aged 18 years and over and consecutively selected in PC. Patient data were obtained by direct interview and access to the computerised history, and recording the clinical and analytical variables of interest. The determination and recording of urine microalbumin (MALB), glomerular filtration rate (GFR), foot examination (pulse palpation, monofilament or tuning fork), and electrocardiogram (ECG), if performed annually, and the eye fundus (FO) every two years.A total of 1,420 patients were included, of which 55.8% were male. The mean age (SD) was 70.6 (10.8) years and the mean onset of the diabetes was 9.3 (6.2) years. The mean BMI (kg /m2) was 30.1 (5.4) in females and 29.5 (4.7) in males (P = .023), and a mean HbA1c (%) of 6.9 (1.2). Good metabolic control of DM was achieved in 63.0% (95% CI: 60.4-65.5). In the last two years, 976 (68.7%; 95% CI: 66.2-71.1) patients had an eye fundus examination. The urine microalbumin had been performed on 1,228 patients (86.5%; 95% CI: 84.6-88.2). The mean glomerular filtration rate was performed on 1,391 patients (98.0%; 95% CI: 97.1-98.6), the foot pulses examination on 626 (44.1%; 95% CI: 41.5-46.7), and the neurological examination on 473 patients (33.3%; 95% CI: 30.8-35.8).The results of the present study indicate that the presence of retinopathy or neuropathy is not explored in a significant percentage of patients with DM2. Only seven out of ten patients have been screened for retinopathy, one in three had a neurological examination, and only one in four have all the scans recommended by the CPG.

Su salud a la mano (your health at hand): patient perceptions about a bilingual patient portal in the Los Angeles safety net.

Driven by beneficial patient-centered outcomes associated with patient portal use and the Affordable Care Act, portal implementation has expanded into safety nets-health systems that offer access to care to a large share of uninsured, Medicaid, and other vulnerable populations. However, little attention has been paid to the factors that affect portal accessibility by the vulnerable patients served by these health systems-including those who are limited English proficient (LEP). The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LAC DHS), the second-largest safety net system in the nation, launched its first patient portal, and one of the few bilingual English-Spanish interfaces in existence, in March of 2015. To explore portal awareness and perceptions, we conducted focus groups with LAC DHS patients, in English and Spanish (LEP). The Technology Acceptance Model was used to guide thematic analysis of focus group data. Of the 46 participants, 37 were patients and 9 were caretakers; 23 were English-speaking and 23 Spanish-speaking LEP. All patients had diabetes or hypertension. Over half had an annual household income <$10 000, yet 78% of English-speaking and 65% of Spanish-speaking LEP participants reported at-home Internet access. Participants' discussion centered around 3 major thematic narratives: (1) participants' awareness or attitudes about the LAC DHS portal; (2) role of culture, language, or community with regard to portal accessibility and utility; and (3) perceived needs for successful portal implementation. Safety net participants identified concrete benefits to the portal and emphasized the need for portal engagement that offered accessible education, support, and resources in clinical and community settings. The portal offers an additional opportunity to engage the patient and family with trusted and validated health information, and should be further developed in this capacity. This study provides a better understanding of preferred improvements of patient portal engagement that guide broader health technology efforts to address electronic health disparities.

Framing the invisible hands. Work, cinema and crisis in La mano invisible (Macián 2016)

ABSTRACTThe second half of the 20th century witnessed the gradual decline of the working class as a collective political actor. Spanish film La mano invisible (David) turns workers into actual actors, representing ‘the wonderful spectacle of work’ in front of an invisible audience. Using a dual social and formal analysis, this article addresses how this film unveils two other invisibilities: that of the workers in the era of post-democracy; and that of neoliberalism as a ‘natural order’ constraining thought and action. This paper shows La mano invisible as a highly political film for it challenges the dominant formal, production and ideological norms. Produced as a cooperative and distributed mainly through festivals and independent cinemas, I argue that the film is an extraordinary example of the interface between culture and society. La mano invisible reveals and questions the invisible relations of power and violence that pertain the world of work in capitalist societies through the film’s politics of form, production and distribution. By the radical coherence of all these politics, La mano invisible amplifies the resonance of its message, asking the audience: who said work had to be like this?

Motor function in Rett syndrome: comparing clinical and parental assessments.

To describe a new clinical tool, the Rett Syndrome Motor Evaluation Scale (RESMES) and to assess (loco-)motor function in people with Rett syndrome (RTT). Formal assessment provided by physicians was followed by parents' direct observation at home using the RESMES. Sixty females (mean [SD] age 12y 5mo [8y 9mo], range 3-40y) with a clinical diagnosis and genetically determined RTT participated in the study. Spearman's/Pearson's coefficients assessed the correlation between the clinicians' and caregivers' evaluations, as well as the correlation of RESMES scores with other scales, namely the Pain Assessment in Advanced Dementia, the Rett Assessment Rating Scale, the Modified Ashworth Scale, and hand function (assessed with a scale of evaluation of purposeful hand function). Scores provided by parents and clinicians were tested statistically by Mann-Whitney U test. Approximately 88% of patients had moderate to severe RTT symptoms and, on average, moderate motor impairment based on the RESMES. RESMES total scores provided by clinicians and caregivers were highly correlated (r=0.91), as were the subscale scores. Postural transition was a critical area of the RESMES, where parents systematically provided lower scores than clinicians, indicating milder degrees of disability. Severity of scoliosis and mutation type emerged as significant predictors of motor function. The RESMES characterized the (loco-)motor impairments of the patients with RTT well. It also showed a close correlation between the evaluations of clinicians and caregivers, with the possible exception of postural transition tasks, which should be carefully addressed in a clinical setting. The type of mutation and presence of scoliosis should be evaluated, as they predicted the ability to walk. Caregivers at home can reliably assess motor function in Rett syndrome using the Rett Syndrome Motor Evaluation Scale (RESMES). RESMES scores provided by clinicians and parents were highly correlated. The severity of scoliosis and the genetic mutation predicted standing and walking abilities.

Dirty hands: The toxic politics of denunciation.

In September 2013, President Correa balanced himself on a felled log over an oil waste pit in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Extending a bare hand dripping with crude, he launched La Mano Sucia de Chevron campaign, demanding accountability for decades of contamination. This article explores the role of bodily knowledge in witnessing industrial contamination and struggles for environmental justice. Situating the mano sucia in the history of activism in the region, I show how the juxtaposition of different hands within the same motif reveals profoundly asymmetric relationships to the toxic entanglements that oil produces. Dirtied hands reveal the co-production of toxicity and power in extractive landscapes: At times throughout this article, the gesture calls for corporate accountability and distributive environmental justice, at other times, it reveals the systemic production of material, social and political distance between the accrual of benefit and the production of harm in an industrial-capitalist order. While drawing on the central role of bodily knowledges in apprehending environmental harm, I argue that bodily knowledges must also be examined for their specific relationships to forms of power and exploitation, and for their potential for appropriation by other parties - even when dedicated to condemning environmental injustice.

El monstruo mundo by Azucena Hernández

Reviewed by: El monstruo mundo by Azucena Hernández Holly Jackson (bio) El monstruo mundo By Azucena Hernández. Chicago: Colección Ríolago, Ars Comunis Editorial, 2016. 110 pp. ISBN: 978-0997289008. The perennial question of how literature is to engage violence lies at the heart of Azucena Hernández’s novella El monstruo mundo. Set in a dystopian city-world that bears the traces of globalization, neoliberalism, human and drug trafficking, and femicide—as well as a casual complicity in these forces— Hernández’s fragmentary antinarrative gives us a philosophy of language in which expression is fated: “pues el defecto de la palabra fue el mundo, seis días de labores extenuantes y uno de afasia” (10). Periodic revelations like this one propel the narration inward, rather than forward, deeper into the consciousness of an unnamed narrator. The result is a surreal and uneasy mindscape, “el oscuro eco de la noche que es la mente” (11). Despite the futility of language it proclaims, El monstruo mundo is a highly literary work. At the level of the word, Hernández’s writing is luminous, even loving; at the level of the sentence, her prose is contemplative and rhythmic. Yet nihilistic self-doubt winds its way through the lyricism. Language is poor, the narration says—but it says so in poetry. Creationism, or the esperpento of creationism, is an important register here. From the chaos of fear—“En el principio era el miedo” (26)—emerges the already-failed word: the divine is aphasic, and it is a senseless world that tumbles forth. Thus, the novella implicitly asks: What creation myth explains the postmodern world? And what is the status of humanity in this world? While the narration draws the reader deep into the narrating mind, the narrator’s identity remains uncertain. The narrator-as-entity is distant from the narrative enunciation. Occasionally the first-person narration turns omniscient. The narrator’s neighbor and dealer, D., is also indeterminate and seems at times more like a hallucinatory figment of the narrator’s dependencies than a separate character. Their interpersonal encounters are vaporous: “Hablaba con alguien que tampoco existía” (13). Of the narrator’s body, we know little but its penetration of and by the city: the narrator roves the city’s seams, works in a pizza joint, falls back into a drug haze, vomits. The city is similarly anonymous, faintly tick-marked by the nocturnal landscape of sex club, fast-food chain, factory, slum. This phantasmatic quality of the text works to channel the forces of our late capitalist world, which is violent and disconnected from the past: “El pasado ya no decía nada” (21). Despite the narrator’s corporeal abstraction, bodies—often illicit bodies—remain a constant across the disjointed time and space of the narrative. That bodies inflict and suffer misogynistic violence is a subtext throughout the novella, and the repugnance of bodies—or, in Slavoj Žižek’s words, the “radically ambiguous monstrosity of the Neighbor-Thing” (163)—is a drive in Hernández’s language. This is not a spectacle of horror but an intervention. By looking head-on at that which is disgusting, the novella inquires into the ideological practice of disgust: disgust, too, is a force that courses through the monstrous world, now masking, now enabling. Across the social differences it upholds, disgust inspires arousal: “La repugnancia es recíproca, otra forma de seducción” (67). When the narrator weeps in a café, the scene is not about the first person but rather the discomfort and shame of the other patrons. In a parenthetical gloss of the incident (again, the narrating mind is at a remove from the narrator’s somatic experience), the narrator draws an analogy between the stranger who cries in public and the beggar who asks for money, saying of the latter: “extiende la mano que precisa dinero. El afortunado caritativo estira a su vez un billete de diez dólares cuando apenas ha mirado al hombre menesteroso, y vuelve rápidamente la vista a su lap top, como si intentase suprimir esa visión desagradable con la tecla Delete” (25...