| Editor’s Note | Dear Readers, This special issue focuses on indigenous writings and covers many of the topics included in our Call for Papers: politics and poetics, issues of sovereignty, indigenous feminisms and resistance through indigenous epistemologies. Each section reflects multiple experiences and critical approaches as well as disciplinary perspectives (history, literature and education), challenging our understanding of academic writing in the humanities [ . . . ] Sincerely, The Directors of English Studies in Latin America Andrea Casals and Allison Ramay | Download PDF |
| Articles | The Desolate Paradise: Empire, Exile and Existentialism in Colonial Latin America: Antonio di Benedetto’s Zama and Juan José Saer’s The Witness By Matt Jones Article The link between exile and existentialism is often lost in the depersonalised world of the Other, where individual expression and desire, as well as the individuals themselves, are blurred by the broad metaphors and sweeping generalisations used to describe and understand groups of people. Yet, both Antonio di Benedetto’s Zama and Juan José Saer’s The Witness offer precise and distinct visions of the powerful effect exile and oppression have on the individual and their sense of identity, belonging and hope. Recently translated into English, Zama subverts traditional imperial/colonial stereotypes to offer a more complex vision of the existential effect of colonisation on the individual. Similarly, The Witness deconstructs the age of exploration and complicates the received wisdom of this period of history and its silenced characters. Both novels use the colonial period as an allegory for Latin America’s position in a contemporary global setting, and as such speak to groups struggling for sovereignty or autonomy. In addition, either explicitly or by implication, both novels turn the Latin American gaze back toward Europe and so offer insights for those looking to understand their role as colonisers in the postcolonial Anglophone world. This essay aims to identify the existential pressure created by exile and examine how the struggle for identity manifests itself in Latin American literature. Given that Latin American writers continue to find inspiration and allegory in the colonial experience even after two centuries of independence, and given that the Anglophone world has much less experience of the postcolonial setting, it seems highly relevant that we study these insights in detail. Key words: English literature, postcolonial, exile, existentialism, sovereignty | Download PDF |
| Articles | The Image Keeps Talking: A Visual Interrogation of the Colonial Archive of the Mapuche People By Sebastián López Vergara Article This essay interrogates the colonial visual archive of the Mapuche people as a decolonial exercise. As a decolonial intervention, it moves away from phenomenological approaches to visual archives in which meaning resides only in the image. Rather it proposes to engage with colonial history and its social formations as ongoing forms of political power that give shape to the Chilean nation-state, modernity, and capitalist extraction. A decolonial engagement with visual culture is not a restoration of the “original meaning” of colonial archives, but a critical interrogation of the remainders of structural forms of subjugation and differentiation from the present. Thus, I propose to place Gustavo Milet Ramírez’s photographic portraits of Mapuche women along with the racialization of the Mapuche people and dispossession and extraction of their territories at the turn of the twentieth century. I read these images from the present with Francisco Huichaqueo Pérez’s short film Chi Rütram Amulniei ñi Rütram in order to unlock the rigidity of colonial meaning and explore questions of subaltern history-making, gender, Indigeneity, culture, and extractivism. For this final point, I will discuss the complex contestations that Indigenous media offers to critically engage with colonial visual regimes and forms of cultural agency. Key words: Visual culture, colonialism, archives, Mapuche | Download PDF |
| Articles | Escenarios de frontera y migración en la voz poética de Faumelisa Manquepillan en “Paseo Ahumada” By María Angélica Peralta Valderrama Article Este artículo busca escuchar la voz poética de Faumelisa Manquepillan en su poema “Paseo Ahumada”, en el cual escenifica parte de las experiencias y sentimientos vividos cuando, en la década de 1980, debe migrar desde su comunidad de origen a la ciudad de Santiago para trabajar como “nana” y así aportar a la economía familiar que se encontraba en una situación de pobreza. La cantautora y poeta nos lleva a recorrer sentimientos de dolor y discriminación en un espacio fronterizo, buscando ser una voz para otras mujeres y para su comunidad al denunciar y a la vez reivindicar a quienes han quedado forcluidos de los espacios de poder. Desde una perspectiva en base a los pensamientos de las feministas poscoloniales y de la mirada decolonial, se busca seguir el relato que la poeta construye desde su lugar, desde sus inscripciones emotivas, alejándose así de las imágenes que han estereotipado a la mujer indígena mapuche en una sola lectura. Key words: Frontera, migración, nana, decolonial | Download PDF |
| Articles | El lugar como espacio de denuncia y significación en el poemario Wafpule Mülenymun (Aquí estamos) de Rubén Curricoy By Elvira Rodríguez Droguett Article Existe una vinculación entre la poesía mapuche y la política. En esta, encontramos distintos ejes temáticos desarrollados por los autores. En este caso, nos interesa revisar aquella que apunta a la construcción de la identidad a partir de las características del lugar. El objetivo de este artículo es establecer una relación entre la poesía, la ecocrítica y el movimiento autonomista mapuche en la obra del poeta Rubén Curricoy. En esa tríada, la idea de lugar se vuelve fundamental, pues desde ahí surgen estas relaciones. Desde el lugar, se critica el desarrollo industrial que atenta contra la tierra, además, se construye un espacio identitario. La aproximación a la poesía se realizará a partir del concepto de lugar propuesto por L. Buell y las ideas sobre el territorio trabajadas desde el movimiento autonomista mapuche. Key words: Poesía mapuche, autonomía, ecocrítica, lugar, territorio | Download PDF |
| Non-Fiction | Noticias de Guamán Poma By Rodrigo Cánovas Non fiction Este ensayo es la transcripción de la intervención que hizo el profesor Rodrigo Cánovas en la Facultad de Letras de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile en otoño de 2017 a propósito de las celebraciones del día de las Letras que se festeja en conmemoración de Shakespeare y Cervantes. [ . . . ] | Download PDF |
| Non-Fiction | An interview with Dr. Philip Nel By Andrea Casals Non fiction Dr. Philip Nel is Director of the Children’s Literature Program at Kansas State University, author of Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books (2017) and Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (2012) and co-editor of Keywords for Children’s Literature (2011) with Lissa Paul and Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature (2008) with Julia Mickenberg, among others. Last August he was invited by the Chilean Ministry of Education to open the Seminario Internacional ¿Qué leer? ¿Cómo leer?: Lectura e Inclusión held at Universidad Católica with a keynote called “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?”. The local audience responded to his arguments with a big round of applause. Reading children´s literature as a boy himself, he became a lifelong reader, yet professor Nel does not romanticize children´s books, actually, he takes them very seriously, and that was made clear during his presentation in Santiago. In this brief interview he offers us further insights to his arguments. [ . . . ] | Download PDF |
| Non-Fiction | A propósito de la eco-espiritualidad: El caso de la UNIBOL en Bolivia By Ginett Vanessa Pineda Non fiction Este trabajo explora la epistemología y la praxis indígena de la eco-espiritualidad en la educación intercultural y plurilingüe de la Universidad Indígena de Bolivia (UNIBOL)2. Este planteamiento sugiere repensar la forma en que se conciben, construyen, transmiten y practican conocimientos eco-espirituales en las universidades y hasta qué punto incitan (o no) un modelo de vida saludable para el individuo y de protección de la Naturaleza3. Los objetivos principales son dos: En primer lugar, se examina y cuestiona la inclusión de epistemes indígenas en el currículum formativo, en especial la relación eco-espiritual del ser humano con la Pachamama, con el propósito de formar profesionales y técnicos indígenas que contribuyan al desarrollo sostenible local y regional y al mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de sus comunidades y, en segundo lugar, se analiza este centro académico como un proyecto de decolonización eco-crítica del pensamiento, donde se negocia con los discursos de las ciencias ecológicas y los saberes indígenas permitiendo así la coexistencia de varios discursos distintivos, reconociendo sus tensiones, desafíos y posibilidades. [ . . . ] | Download PDF |
| Fiction | Selected Poems By Narlan Matos Translated by José F. Buñuelos-Montes & Sally Perret | Download PDF |