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Purpose: This paper aims to analyse the university experience of a social laboratory that mixes science and art to instruct communities of sustainability practice in heterogeneous contexts through interpretive audio-visual ethnography and cinematographic language. Design/methodology/approach: The research approach was qualitative; data were triangulated through the thorough revision of the literature reported on this praxis, the auto-ethnography of the founder and CEO of this social laboratory and the systematization of the training categories from their documentaries. Furthermore, the analysis of this laboratory as a social innovation considered five categories, namely, critical interaction, shared values, social responsibility, digital competences and sustainability practices, and the projects profile was contrasted with the Sustainable Development Goals to show its sustainable approach. Findings: The results showed that the best scored sustainability university communities are interdisciplinary. Moreover, the mix of science and art to train practice communities is a social innovation model that can go beyond university walls to influence its environment in dissimilar and socially disadvantaged territories. Research limitations/implications: This research is based on a case from a Mexican university in a specific cultural context. Although the conclusions cannot be generalized, this case contributes to the need for pertinent complementarity between various classical methodological possibilities which, when articulated, enhance the research work. Practical implications: The results could have practical implications if these are used as inputs in the development of university programmes with an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability training. Originality/value: This research proposes this experience as an attempt to understand how to promote sustainable education among university communities that influence territories with wide social gaps.

In recent years concern about Mexican reading habits has increased. Statistics show short reading interest; an average Mexican reads 3.8 books a year [1]. As teachers, reading habits are important and reflect students' skills and academic performances. Many teachers would complain about students reading habits; it is considered to be non-existent. Teachers might say "students neither read nor write." Students lend and borrow books; questions rely on what are students reading? How do students understand what they know? A survey was carried out on a random sample of students from "Centro de Estudios Científicos y Tecnológicos" (CECyT) campus 11 "Wilfrido Massieu" and campus 15 "Diódoro Antúnez Echegaray" belonging to Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), to know readings and motivations. Quantitative methodologies with an exploratory range were applied. Results; students mostly read books from which North American movies based on, best and long seller books and pdf formats. A workshop was brought about, four sessions per month, to discuss each book, themes, and students' perceptions. Monitors were teachers from different areas and school subjects. Teacher's prejudices interfered on student's discussions and opinions. Reading is a complicated process; it is developed from previous stages. Resume doing, as the primary objective, impedes students from comprehending all information.

This article argues that exposure to culture will help students develop complex linguistic and cultural skills. The authors discuss the use of graded literary readers, audio resources, and films. They present a detailed description of the implementation and results of two simplified novel modules in an EFL program. One module was taught to students from the upper intermediate eighth and ninth levels of the English program. It focused on the novel "1984" by British writer George Orwell. The second module was taught to students from the sixth level of the English program, ranging from high beginner to low intermediate levels, and was structured around "Of Mice and Men," by Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck (2002b). Using these modules, students can approach and interact critically with other cultures, utilizing a graded literary reader and its audio and film versions to aid in the acquisition and strengthening of complex linguistic and cultural skills.

"Literacy for the Americas" was an audiovisual educational program implemented in Mexico and other Latin American countries in the early 1940s by the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA). Walt Disney Studios made four short films that were designed to teach illiterate residents of Latin America how to read and write. In Mexico, this project was initially backed by the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) under Jaime Torres Bodet, who appointed Eulalia Guzmán to be the SEP's representative and thus to support the program. Walt Disney asked her to work out a pedagogical proposal for the educational films. This article analyzes the proposal, the development and production of these shorts, and their reception in Mexico. It foregrounds Guzmán's criticisms of these educational materials, which led the OIAA representatives to withdraw them from circulation.

Following the global trend in primary English language instruction, the Ministry of Education in Mexico has recently included English as an additional language as part of the national curriculum for primary grades. Some have questioned whether early EFL programmes can work, given the few instructional hours per week and limited exposure to the target language in non-English speaking environments. However, this article reveals that children in EFL settings often use English more than is commonly thought, and in surprising ways. It examines the types of engagements that primary school students in Mexico have with English when the teacher is not around. These engagements, especially through music, movies, and video games, illustrate the creative ways children draw on their emerging linguistic resources and employ a variety of tools to accomplish a range of communicative functions in English. The results of the study outlined in this article suggest that they can be sources from which teachers can draw pedagogical inspiration.

Background/Context: Early childhood education in the United States is currently suspended between the belief that young children learn through dynamic experiences in which they are able to create and experiment, and the belief that young children's emerging literacy and math skills require formal instruction and assessments to ensure future academic success. This balance is difficult because each approach requires different allowances for children's agency. Purpose/Objective: This study investigates how district administrators, school administrators, pre-K-3 teachers, and bilingual first graders within a school district serving Latina/o immigrant families think about the role of agency in early learning. Setting: Data was collected in Lasso ISD and El Naranjo Elementary School, located on the U.S./Mexico border. Population/Participants: Lasso ISD is predominantly Latina/o with 85% of its population self-identifying as Latina/o and experiencing financial stress. Over 35% of children at El Naranjo are labeled as English Language Learners. We interviewed five administrators, nine teachers, and 24 children. Research Design: The research method used is a variation of multivocal, video-cued ethnography (VCE). Following VCE's pattern of data collection, we made a film of a typical day in a first-grade classroom where children of Latina/o immigrants used agency in their learning. The film was used to elicit perspectives on how much control young children of Latina/o immigrants should have over their learning in the early years. Focus group data was analyzed comparatively across participant groups and district hierarchies. Findings: The data reveals an inverse relationship--termed agency diffusion and deficit infusion--between participants' ideas about the amount of agency students should be afforded in the classroom and the deficit ideas they articulate about children of immigrants and their families. Our findings suggest that even in supportive, academically successful districts, deficit thinking at any level can justify narrow, rote types of instruction that ultimately impact the types of messages young children receive about learning and being a learner. Conclusions/Recommendations: Pre-service and experienced teachers may need help with discriminatory, deficit attitudes toward the families they serve as well as pedagogical skills to offer more agency to children, in the culturally relevant forms that make sense in the classroom. In developing guidelines and policies at school, district, state, and federal levels, agency should be a necessary component of classrooms considered (and labeled) as high quality. Children's perspectives are important ways to determine whether policies and practices are really effective.

The compilation film "La venganza de Pancho Villa" (ca. 1930), created by itinerant exhibitor Felix Padilla, combines footage from two national cinematic traditions--those of the United States and Mexico--to construct a biographical film about the regional hero and revolutionary general Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The film's use of found footage offers a retort to American films rife with stereotypical images of Mexican masculinity. However, a close reading of the film in the context of local practices of film distribution and exhibition finds that the film expresses an oppositional consciousness shaped by the structures and ideologies of the dominant film industries it draws from, including a masculinist nationalism that reinscribes racial and gender hierarchies. (Contains 10 figures and 17 notes.)

Cinepolis, an international movie theatre chain based in Mexico City that believes that people go to the movies in order to learn about better eyesight, has successfully demonstrated the business practice of corporate social responsibility to the public through its visual health campaign known as "Del Amor Nace la Vista" (Love Gives Birth to Eyesight). One primary way Cinepolis communicates visual health to its patrons is through the trailer messages shown prior to the feature presentations. Because business sustainability is commonly defined by three pillars, economic, environmental, and social development, the authors examine how Cinepolis successfully served the social dimension of business sustainability. This article discusses this specific business practice of social responsibility as a part of sustainability and its successful impact on improving visual health in Latin America. (Contains 1 figure.)

The novel "Loving Pedro Infante" by Chicana writer Denise Chavez provides an insightful transcultural feminist critique of Golden Age Mexican cinema culture through a careful examination of gender roles. In the novel, the reception of Pedro Infante's films by spectators bridges generations and national spaces and leads to the formation of a transnational border feminism by the female protagonist. This essay advances the fields of Chicano culture and feminist and literary studies by dialoguing with Mexican film studies, history, and popular culture and by setting U.S.-Mexican borderland studies in an international frame of reference.

This article discusses the achievement of the postmodern caballero films and the relevance of the social bandit myth for Chicano resistance. The continued relevance of the social bandit myth is clearly demonstrated by "The Cisco Kid" and "The Mask of Zorro." Both films show how initially flawed or directionless characters can realize their potential to avenge the suffering endured by a subaltern community and in so doing become worthy heroes and role models. "The Cisco Kid" represents a parallel development to that of Ritchie in "La Bamba," in that the very qualities that Ritchie suppresses in order to succeed in North America become those that he treasures after his journey to Mexico, which leads him to create a version of the song that becomes a crossover hit emblematic of a positive cultural hybridity. Similarly, Cisco learns to appreciate his Mexican heritage and use it to his advantage in order to form a more meaningful identity. Despite its heavily ironic tone and its problematic and stereotypical representation of Puss as a drug smuggler, "Shrek II" does not diminish the importance of the Latino swashbuckler as a social bandit who comes to the aid of an oppressed minority. The vibrancy of the Zorro myth in particular is suggested not only by its appropriation in "Shrek II," but also by the fact that a sequel to the film is currently being made and that no less an author than Isabel Allende has based her latest work, "Zorro: A Novel", on the development of the legend. The greatest achievement of the postmodern caballero films lies in their resurrection and radical updating of heroic sagas that point a way forward for Chicano resistance. (Contains 15 notes.)

This article is designed to survey mid-20th century American perceptions of Latin America through popular culture. It focuses on an analysis of the motion picture treatment of Latin America in the American film Juarez. The plot, characters, and cinematography have all been influenced by the social and political climate in the United States and Latin America and by relations between the two regions. The movie reflects the sociopolitical culture of the United States (where the movie was made) at that time.

This paper draws on the philosophical works of Emmanuel Levinas--namely, his notion of "useless suffering"--in order to open up questions of learning and community beyond typical configurations that structure (and sometimes limit) social attachments according to a requisite degree of commonality. It is argued that while discourses of knowledge and emotion enable a sense of understanding and feeling with others, they nonetheless cast differences in a universalized discourse of enlightenment, wherein the other is reduced to a version of the same. Turning to the Levinasian notion of "useless suffering," I consider instead the conditions of possibility opened up paradoxically because the other cannot be rendered in pre-given terms. In so doing, I hope to contribute to on-going discussions in the context of feminism and education interested in theorizing the conditions of possibility for coming together across differences, neither consuming the other as an object of information, nor reducing her or his experience to a version of the self. My argument is structured around Lourdes Portillo's (2001) most recent film, "Missing Young Women," which documents the disappearance, rape, and murder of over 200 women working in Juarez, Mexico. One scene in particular is referenced as a way to underscore how the Levinasian notion of "uselessness" might orient a mode of attentiveness that renders one responsible before understanding, concerned before feeling. Constituted as "a prior" responsibility for the other, it is suggested that "useless suffering" shifts the dominant terms of education and feminism away from the formation of common bonds (in knowledge and emotion) to underscore the conditions of possibility that might lie beyond meaning and being itself.

We identified and characterized microplastics (MPs) in the gastrointestinal tract (GT), gills (GI), and exoskeleton (EX) of Litopenaeus vannamei in a coastal lagoon from the SE Gulf of California. The most common MPs were fibers and fragments with an average size of 403 ± 296 μm, in which the transparent and blue colors predominated. The abundance (items/g as wet weight (ww)) in the GT, GI, and EX was 114.7 ± 33.2, 13.7 ± 5.3 and 3.0 ± 0.5, respectively. The abundance of MPs per shrimp was 13.3 ± 1.1, while the abundance per individual (ww) was 0.9 ± 0.2 MPs/g. Considering the consumption of shrimp in Mexico, MP abundance, and shrimp consumption (discarding GI and EX), we estimated MP ingestion as 280 items/person/year. The results from this study can be used as background information for future MP biomonitoring in shrimp species of ecological and commercial importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay provides an overview of the eras of Mexican cinema followed by an analysis of 10 Spanish-language narco cinematic representations, an overview of the eras of American cinema followed by an analysis of 10 English language narco cinematic representations, and a conclusion that compares and contrasts the Mexican and US narco war cinematic experience. Due to divergent national trajectories – Mexico is engulfed in narco violence and corruption while the United States is not – more differences than similarities exist between these national cinematic genres. Dark spirituality themes are also increasingly evident in more recent narco war films. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through the cinematographic representation of the rural teacher, the social worker and the malaria sprayer man, whom I called sanitarians intermediaries, the recreation of the malaria eradication campaign of 1957 and tuberculosis prevention campaign of 1960, this article analyzes in four époque films the presence of a visual and oral discourse full of nationalistic symbols that overdo the Mexican state labor in public health activities. I confirm that Mexican health films ending in the fifties used as education health tools functioned as mass media propaganda for health authorities in order to create the image of a modern and healthy Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]