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El artículo presenta una conferencia dictada por Marta Acevedo el 11 de mayo de 2011 en el coloquio "Cuarenta años de feminismo en México", celebrado en la Casa de las Humanidades de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, en la cual la autora ofrece una revisión histórica del movimiento feminista en México.

The purpose of this paper is to review the feminist movement, thought and politics that have taken great strength among Latin American women, mainly young women, who have taken to the streets raising their voices to view the violence they suffer daily in all public and private Spaces in which they operate. This chronology seeks to give an account of how feminist theorizations have influenced the consolidation of an explanatory baggage about women's reality. A look at what happened in Mexico with feminism is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to describe the historical evolution of the cooperation between the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and Mexico following the signing of their cooperation agreement in August 1975, which remained in effect until COMECON'S demise in 1991. To this end, a brief analysis is made of the antecedents of this international body, which was created within the so-called socialist bloc, and a review is conducted of the body's conception of international cooperation. After covering the historical context behind the mentioned agreement's negotiation, its legal framework, context and scope are reviewed. This paper thereby seeks to contribute to the historical memory of cooperation policy and its international regime, with particular reference to COMECON and Mexico in the period known as the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I reflect on the risky situations that conditioned my field work in an indigenous community located in the Purépecha Plateau of the state of Michoacán (Mexico), and on the possibilities of telling what "really happened" in the history of that community; the political need to establish the truth became an element of dispute among some of the community members, thus placing me in conflictive situations. The concerns that I express in this article are endogenous, that is, the problem is ascertained through anthropology itself. For this reason, I categorize communication in three concepts: rumor, history and fear. The general questions are: What are the channels that the community members were looking for so as to have their narrative heard, displaced, validated and turned into truth, by engaging in actions that could endanger the ethnographer himself? What is the configuration of the place from where the discourse on the past is authorized and thus embodied in the production of history? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El artículo informa sobre el descubrimiento de los restos de un molino de papel en la Ciudad de México que data del siglo XVI. El molino, construido en el período colonial por la orden agustina, tuvo incidencia en la aceleración del proceso de evangelización en la Nueva España.

Although photography and cities have been close companions, there has been no tradition of the study of cities based on photographic evidence in the social sciences. It is true that in recent decades, history and other disciplines have provided legitimacy to the use of images as a valid research source, and important insights have been used from philosophy and art history so as to refine appropriate methodologies in accordance with their use. However, neither in studies of contemporary cities, nor in historical studies, is it common to see the use of images to question, argue, or interpret urban realities. This paper explores the concept of the panorama -a form of representation widely disseminated as of the end of the 18th Century-, explains its adaptation to the photographic format and, through the analysis of a few exceptional testimonies registered in Mexico prior to 1910, it also reflects on the distance between the purpose of capturing a "totality" within an image and the possibilities for the researcher to interpret from them the nature, layout and shapes of cities. The paper also contributes to the abundant discussion, from a little-known format, on the photographic document and on the scientific status of truth that their creators pursued. Moreover, the methodological proposal for the use and advantages of the photographic medium is delved into within the field of social research, as is how to come to justifiable results regarding the study of urban history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to mortality statistics, in Mexico, during the period 2002-2010, 393 people died by excessive natural heat, mostly in the northwest of the country. Information about these cases is valuable for understanding the social determinants of health associated with this cause of death, so in this paper we analyze the characteristics of dead people that reveal their social situation. The statistics, for example, show that most of the victims were men, most of whom had a low socioeconomic status. This paper explores and opens several lines of research on the impact of high temperatures on the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Seris are an indigenous group that inhabits the central coast of Sonora, Mexico, identified historically as hunter-gatherers and fishers. They were educated under the rural schools program implemented by the federal government in the 1920s. From a regional perspective, this paper explores the scope of this cultural/educational policy to elucidate the factors that led to its implementation, arguing that the rural education aimed at indigenous peoples was determined through negotiations by intermediaries; in this case, ranchers, teachers, local merchants and members of religious associations who sought to adjust the educational programs to this community's existing cultural conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Chiapas, a Mexican southern state, non-formal education spaces have increased rapidly after "Zapatista Movement" in 1994. Nevertheless, recently some scholars have questioned certain activities carried out in these spaces because they find contradictions in the struggle against social exclusion. In this research paper, we analyzed with a reflexive point of view and with a critical approach the results obtained in a study performed in one of these spaces of non-formal education in which social transformation is promoted as an answer for the social exclusion problem. Here, we pointed out the delicate line that exists between actions and discourses in these non-formal education spaces. To reach this goal, we worked with a critical intercultural perspective and thus, we carried out an exercise to re-thinking space, relationships and social-educative practices in Amalgama, A. C. (fictional name), a non-formal education space located in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. As a result, we found out, on one hand that in the space, in the relationships and in the social-educative practice of Amalgama, A.C. there are elements of the colonialcapitalist-patriarchal structure, and such elements are closer to the coloniality than we expected at the beginning. On the other hand, this exercise allowed us to recover the perceptions of the educators to re-signifying this space, relationships and social-educative practice to eventually make social transformations encouraged them since the decolonial pedagogical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the various actions taken by the authorities of the state of Zacatecas (Mexico) during the First Federal Republic (1824-1835), in order to find solutions to problems related to the exercise of patronage and related topics. It shows that these proposals were useful to defend and drive federalism, and to advance a project to create a secular and liberal State and society. The paper concludes that the attempt to apply this was ambiguous, as it became part of the "pitfalls" that prevented the first federalism from consolidating by contributing to the division of local and national political groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the foundation of the Convent "Nuestra Señora de la Salud" in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, in 1747, noting the role of the local elite and interest in the erection of this convent for Spanish women. The monastery represents one of the strategies of this group of Spaniards to strengthen the city of Patzcuaro in the conflict with Valladolid to get the capital of the bishopric. We also discuss how the Dominican convent of Patzcuaro, came to reinforce the prestige of the most important families who held the political, economic and social power of the city in the second half of the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the analysis of a specific type of intimacy that developed among couples in relationships during the first half of the 20th Century in Mexican society. First, the analysis traces the presence of the romantic love complex through some of the sociocultural discourses and norms on women, the family and love during the said period, as well as the ways in which freedom in mate selection developed. These elements provide the context in which one specific type of intimate life was likely to unfold between couples, and which was characterized, among other things, by the projection of an anticipated future, a mystical union between the couple, a weak presence of eroticism in sexual life, and probably a low-level of emotional communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the characteristics of the cholera epidemic of 1833 in the city of Veracruz, from a sociodemographic approach, using information from the burial records of the Parish between 1832 and 1834, as well as the statistics and reports prepared by the Governors of Veracruz from 1827 to 1834, with which it has been possible to develope mortality indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens. The Case of the School of Arts and Crafts in Jalisco, 1842-1910 In this article there will be discussed the paper that the Schools of Arts and Trades played in the educational Mexican context of the 19th Century. We will see that these nurseries had the intention of forming "useful" citizens for the State. That is to say, productive and "civilized". This would achieved, by learning manual work in the schools of arts and trades. Which, Traditional trades were taught to the poor inhabitants of the most important urban concentrations of the country. One of them was Guadalajara, where it was founded the School of Mechanical Arts (later the School of Arts and Trades) as a way of training the workers who were needed by the new textile factories in the entity. The intention also was to grant an honest and honorable way of life for the needy ones, who were seen -according to the morality of the moment- as a danger that had to be eradicated. For this reason, the educational occupation proposed by the Schools of Arts and Trades was confined in the welfare, which was also related directly to the correctional system. Therefore, the institutions mentioned above were not offering an alternative for the social mobility, but instead they were conceived for turning considered "useless" people into productive subjects for the interests of the State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jose Osorio Espinosa de los Monteros, who became Judge of the Royal Court of Mexico, attained a degree in Civil Law from the Royal University of Mexico with a thesis published in 1668, and now preserved at the Nation's General Archive (agn). The purpose of this paper is to present said thesis along with its paleographic transcription and his translation, as well as a philological and historical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general, the probanzas de méritos y servicios have been used to reconstruct the history of the New World Conquest from the viewpoint of Spaniards. However, many Indians quickly familiarized with this legal tool and employed it in order to defend their own interests in the colonial system. This paper aims to examine the use that Mayas, Chontales or Mexicans made of the probanzas in sixteenth-century Yucatán. I will try to highlight how the strategies they implemented in order to present their merits and deeds not only depended on the objectives they followed and on their familiarity with the colonial legal culture, but also on their knowledge of the agents and interests at stake in the peninsula. Therefore, I will claim the intrinsic political value of the probanzas, being their authors either Indians or Spaniards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing works on the Party of Democratic Revolution usually emphasize charismatic leadership or internal groups. Little has been said about why fraudulent elections occur inside the party. This work unpacked the unit of analysis in four observations (1999, 2002, 2005 and 2008) to perform two synchronous comparisons (1999-2005 and 2002- 2008), achieving depth and explanation. If we consider the charismatic leadership or groups as independent variables, we would not be able to predict fraudulent elections, since the influence of the two is only to only shape the formulas in dispute. The paper concludes by arguing that the explanation lies in the similarity of forces and the reduced cost of violating the rules by the competitors; this will provide empirical evidence to show that in the presence of these conditions there can be fraudulent elections (1999 and 2008), whereas in their absence there can be fair elections (2002 and 2005). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patriarchal family has been a basic organizational structure for many handicraft workshops among the peasant villages in Mexico. From a micro-approach and anthropological view, this paper analyses the influence of two kinship cultural practices that take place in the transmission and organization of pottery production. This article compares how the patriliny and agnatic kinship principies operate in the learning of the occupation and generation of family workshop among the artisans of two legendary communities specialized in the elaboration of cook pots for Mexican traditional food. The masculinization of this occupation depends on different cultural issues and among them stand out the kinship principies like patriliny, heritage and residency, which are cultural practices that explain the predominance of the masculine figure in pottery production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the disappearance of indigenous villages during the colonial period in the region of Los Altos de Jalisco. Several authors have analyzed the catastrophic decline of this population following the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas; however, at least for western Mexico there are no detailed studies that address the redistribution of space after the loss of population. Such a situation is even more obvious in the case of Los Altos de Jalisco, where, although there have been many studies aiming to understand the ranch property as a typical local settlement, the ancient indigenous villages in the area have been almost unnoticed, hence the relevance of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the academic and ideological profile of Manuel Gamio, considered the father of modern anthropology in Mexico, and one of the main ideologues that marked the twentieth century indigenous, both in Mexico and Latin America. Gamio's influence was exercised not only in the discussion of ideas, but permeated into public policy and logic of building indigenous institutions orientation. Its formation is exposed in the stream of cultural relativism (or historical particularism) under the tutelage of american anthropologist Franz Boas and his innovations in the field of archeology, ethnography and anthropology in Mexico, and his decisive influence to leave behind the nineteenth-century paradigm "the good Indian is a dead Indian", emphasizing the need to incorporate the indigenous to modern postrevolutionary state project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of de devices managed by certain public welfare institutions of central Mexico called to serve at-risk children, from 1960 through the first decade of the century. Based on the concepts of political rationalities and technologies of government, addresses the changes that have experimented and unfinished realize traffic has led to a form of disciplinary attention (represented by massive assistance and welfare interchangeably) to another control (represented by a less treatment and management assistance), which has resulted in an increasing state of helplessness process towards these children, while some groups to criminalize them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the disappearance of indigenous villages during the colonial period in the region of Los Altos de Jalisco. Several authors have analyzed the catastrophic decline of this population following the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas; however, at least for western Mexico there are no detailed studies that address the redistribution of space after the loss of population. Such a situation is even more obvious in the case of Los Altos de Jalisco, where, although there have been many studies aiming to understand the ranch property as a typical local settlement, the ancient indigenous villages in the area have been almost unnoticed, hence the relevance of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of collective work focused on the construction of cultural mapping in the field of religion within the framework of a national research project called La formación de las ofertas culturales y sus públicos en México Siglo XX: genealogías, cartografías y prácticas culturales (FOCYP) conducted during 2001-2003 in the city of Oaxaca. The project was divided into four historical periods; the territory was delimited from data provided by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía e Informática (INEGI); and field work was employed across the observation unit to collect data and then record them in physical and electronic records that were fed into a previously constructed information system. The work involved the preparation of 5 maps and the results of the investigation showed the transformation of the religious field in the city of Oaxaca during the twentieth century, the privileged presence of Catholic churches along with the sharp rise in non-Catholic Christian churches that made possible seeing that, at least in quantity, the Catholic offer has been overcome. The above results provide an opportunity to reflect on the construction of new religious identities and their cultural implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of my paper is to make a balance in the rural school historiography in Mexico, and through it, dialogue with those made in other Latin American countries. Instead of trying to have a joint vision of rural educational development in Latin America through a supposed progress, what really interests is to go beyond national barriers with the purpose of generating a debate about the heterogeneity of different local realities and theoretical-methodological perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanders, Parsons and Santley [1979] introduced a theory of State origins that attempted to explain the rise of the teotihuacan state in the basin of Mexico. This was the product of more than 15 years of fieldwork, which were the testing ground not only for the theory, but also for field (survey) techniques. The book was initially acknowledged as a major contribution, except for one particular review that turned to be very influential: that of Richard Blanton, who had been part of Sander's research team but had a different view of the role of population pressure. Since in their theory Sanders and his assitants had incorporated elements of previous theories (including Carneiro, Wittfogel and others), theories which scholars in the University of Michigan claimed they had refuted, the initial enthusiasm for the book soon gave way to a guarded skepticism and later, to the idea that the theory was "the most refuted theory of the world". This essay presents, in a personal tone, the story of how I met Sanders, became his friend and was aware of the theory and its later criticism; and how and why I decided, more than 25 years ago, to dedicate a good portion of my academic work to show that, not only the theory was not refuted at all, but it might have been the best contender at the time (1981-1982). In order to accomplish that, it was first necessary to develop a procedure of theoretical analysis that would allow for a more careful consideration of any archaeological theory and the grounds on which it could be said to be refuted or corroborated. This quest became a personal obsession that, I hope, will end with my doctoral dissertation [2008] in which the procedure is explained in detail and applied to the theory, and with this paper, which relates this obsession to the deep appreciation I always had of Sanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bill Sanders was devoted to the study of commoners, the mass of the population who with their labor sustained the opulent lifestyle of the ruling elites. Through regional survey, Bill Sanders and his students traced the history of commoners from the remains of their agricultural landscapes and their settlement patterns. This paper seeks to answer two questions regarding the status of commoners in the Postclassic basin of Mexico. First, did commoners benefit from Aztec rule? Did the political unification of the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region permit the exchange of products across ecological zones, foster specialization and produce a higher standard of living for commoners despite the tribute payments demanded by the Aztecs? Second, did commoners contribute ideas as well as labor to the social development of Postclassic Mesoamerica? If, as Sanders claimed, "innovations and variations are constantly arising" that permit societies to adapt more effectively to their environments, were commoners a source of innovation or was innovation the product of urban-based administrators, priests and craftsmen? Household archaeology at Postclassic Xaltocan in the northern basin of Mexico enables us to address these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes how and why, in the early 20th century, women came to constitute the majority of elementary school teachers in Mexico City. A study is made of the statistical tendencies during the time period, the criteria for hiring and promotion, and the professional profile of teachers by sex, as well as the discourses on women and teaching. In 1875, 56.8% of all teachers were women; thirty years later, out of 1,046 teachers, 76.2% were women. Two factors were decisive: a) educational opportunities were created for girls to attend elementary school in numbers equal to their male classmates, reflected in employment opportunities for female teachers; and b) men became uninterested in attending normal school, while a large numbers of female teachers were certified. In conclusion, I analyze the discourses on sexual difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses one type of important intermediaries of colonial Yucatan, the general interpreters of Yucatan's Juzgado Privado de Indios. From the time of Gaspar Antonio Chi in 1580 until the demise of this court in the 1820s, these men mediated directly in land disputes, complaints against priests and other officials, and translated decrees initially published in Spanish for the province's Maya-speaking majority. The activities of the interpreters demonstrate that Yucatan had a high number of individuals literate and fluent in both Maya and Spanish until the close of the colonial period. Furthermore, the quantity of qualified individuals serving unofficially as interpreters during the late eighteenth century and the surprising number of non-Mayas in need of their services also shows that the colonial period was a time in which Maya spread as the predominant language of Yucatan rather than a time of decline for the region's native language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of internet research (mostly anglophone) between 1990 and 2007. To do so, some major theoretical topics of internet studies are analyzed, and several key debates are described in order to show the internet's evolution as an object of study. It is suggested that internet studies have become a field of knowledge under construction with increasing academic legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

José Ignacio Bartolache was a Mexican physician who lived in the Eighteenth-century. He published between 1772-73, El Mercurio Volante, con noticias curiosas e importantes sobre varios asuntos de Física y Medicina. This paper is considered to be the first medical periodical publication of the New World. He intended to «enlighten» people, writing about what he thought it might be important for everyone, not only for other physicians or well instructed men. He considered that the «desire of knowledge is equally inspired to every man» and also to women. That is why he wrote in Spanish and not in Latin, hoping to be understood by everybody, and so he became a real teacher of the eighteenth-century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines three issues which try to legitimize the Porfirio Diaz Regime, in Mexico, between 1876-1910. The main idea in this research is that during the second half of the XIX century, we obtained the historic synthesis. This synthesis harmonizes many Mexican pasts, and it translates the neoclassic-architecture style into the artistic tendency which is used to identify the regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following paper, we attempt to re-evaluate the rise of complex societies in the Valley of Oaxaca based on indigenous conceptualizations of land, territory and "resources" as components within a broader Mesoamerican cosmological system. In so doing, we challenge Eurocentric theoretical models of the emergence of civilization that rely on a uniform linear progression, and we articulate an approach that seeks to integrate both material and ideological perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the history of institutionalized citizen participation in Mexico City. However, it doesn't attempt to make a thorough account of facts, mechanisms, instances and legal instruments which, dating from 1928 until the present day, preceded and characterized its building and formal development in this capital city. What this brief historical review particularly aims at, is at showing how was born a set of relations, practices and perceptions, that characterize a particular political culture, through the construction and functioning of "diverse" institutional modes along history. This current political culture is part of a symbolic universe that embodies traditions and customs that explain, to a very large extent, citizen participation's achievements and limitations within Mexico's capital city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]