pp. 108-122. This article analyzes aspects of popular culture in the context of the Bicentennial in Mexico in 2010. Carlos Monsiváis and Jorge Volpi, two representatives of urban popular culture, portray in their respective works – Apocalípstick (2009) and El insomnio de Bolívar (2009) – complementary visions of the future. Oscillating between the themes of apocalypse on the one hand and utopia on the other, both use the subversive potential of popular culture to analyze...

141 pp.

41-57 In this article we analyze two works of Mexican crime literature that share a common theme, human trafficking for the purpose of organ trafficking: Loverboy (2002) by Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz and Los niños de colores (1993) by Eugenio Aguirre. To do so, we first outline an overview of the current violence in Mexico (1), then we summarize the theoretical framework on which we are based (2). Subsequently, we analyze both works, questioning above all...

pp. 21-29. The concepts of crisis and conflict are inextricably linked to notions of modernity and draw on such heterogenous disciplines as political sciences, philosophy, economics and psychoanalysis. This paper aims to identify and analyze the so called ‘apparatus of crisis’ starting from the ancient Greece conception of krisis in medical and political fields. On the strength of the bio-political genealogy of crisis, I argue that the diffusion and the pervasiveness of the term ‘crisis’...

pp. 4-11.

pp. 33-48. This study reviews relevant aspects of the culture and religion of Mesoamerica before the arrival of Europeans. These pre-Hispanic elements appear as models of trends and mentalities of the Mexico of the Mexican Revolution, mostly through the corrido. Like Aztec society, Mexican society, reflected in its corridos, emphasizes the heart as the material and spiritual center of the body and by synecdochic extension, the nation. Both pre-Hispanic chant and corridos are full of...

pp. 46-65. In this article, I discuss various layers of masculinity, in particular hegemonic masculinity and the notion of ‘machismo’ used by Robert Rodríguez in his Mexico Trilogywhich comprises the films El Mariachi (1992), Desperado(1995), and Once upon a time in Mexico (2003). Their focus on male hybridity is of particular interest for this study because it could be regarded as an important means of resistance to patriarchal masculinity which links up to the symbolism...

pp. 33-52. This article will analyze the continued presence of the historical figure of the Malinche, commonly known as the traitor of the Mexican nation at the time of the Conquest. Starting from her origin and biography, its reception in Mexican and Chicano literature of the twentieth century will be studied. Special attention will be paid to her influence in the creation of an identity of the «daughters of the Malinche», that is, of the...

pp. 84-95. This article reflects on the role of parties in the configuration of contemporary political practice. It asks to what extent can we continue to speak of "politics" in a context in which the objective of the action of professional politicians has ceased to be the community and the effective management of its conflicts to focus on the conquest and maintenance of power. To this end, Immanuel Kant’s notions of "public reason" and "private...

pp. 73-83. The purpose of this article is to trace the common logical elements that exist between the current European socio-political situation and the historical epoch of the transition between the Republic and the Roman Empire, as studied and analyzed by G. W. F. Hegel, particularly in his analysis of the defining characteristics of Stoicism in Rome. A detailed study of these structural coincidences, as well as of the role played in both epochs by...

pp. 52-72. In this paper we define in general what governance is and some of its main characteristics. Some general features are located to understand the application of the concept of democratic governance, based on the state of mass media and telecommunications in Mexico, for which we propose some general paradoxes that affect Mexican society. In the second part we present some aspects of the media-society-government tension during the 12 years of government of the...

130 pp.

pp. 74-86. This contribution discusses the signifying potential of Mexico’s most famous ghost, La Llorona, as an alternative symbol of the Mexican Nation. It analyses both its representation in popular culture and music and in two works of literature published north and south of the Mexican border: Rodolfo Anaya’s novel The Legend of La Llorona and Eduardo Antonio Parra’s short story La piedra y el río. It becomes evident that literature and ‘high art’ in...

131 pp.

pp. 109-126. In this essay we analyze the process of mythification of the hero of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa, based on Jan Assmann’s (1992) theoretical approach to myth. First, we summarize the "official myth" created by the political discourse, answering the following questions: who transformed Pancho Villa into a myth, how did they do it and for what purposes? We will apply the concepts of Assmann, who distinguishes between "cold" and "hot" memories. We...

pp. 14-32. In his painting Chingado (1998), US-American artist Walton Ford undertakes an interspecies queering of modern Mexico’s origin myth. Using the visual protocols of early 19th-century natural history artists, Ford presents the colonial clash of cultures as animal allegory. With a focus on the ‘ink and pencil part’ of the painting, i.e. the rich scriptural marginalia surrounding the figures of a bull and a jaguar in lethal embrace, this article addresses the ‘writerly imagination’...

74-92 This article reviews murder as an aesthetic creation in the short story 'Blanco y Rojo' by Bernardo Couto Castillo. It discusses the different functions that violence can play in narrative as well as the relationship between literature and morality. To understand the specific role of murder in Bernardo Couto's 'Blanco y Rojo', we review the aesthetic proposal of the Mexican decadentistas of the late nineteenth century, who were frequently labeled as immoral by their...

pp. 12-13.

pp. 27-47. Mexican identity is characterized by a mixture of different identities and defined by an interaction of very different concepts (mestizaje, mexicanidad, indigenismo and others) which connect history with the present and thus negotiate local traditions as well as global changes. The piece La Malinche by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda (1998) deals with these different concepts from a critical point of view by transferring the history of the Conquest of Mexico to the present...

pp. 73-87. n September 1810, just a few days after the start of the Mexican War of Independence, insurrectionary troops attacked the city of Guanajuato. This included storming the so-called Alhóndiga de Granaditas – a granary in which the peninsular families of Guanajuato had taken refuge. The conquest of the Alhóndiga was the first combat of the War of Independence and its cruelty elicited multifarious and often controversial interpretations over the course of the nineteenth...

pp. 177-198.

pp. 131-143. Taking into account the novel El apando (1969) and the last short stories that Revueltas gathered in Material de los sueños (1974), this essay analyzes how the Mexican writer manipulates the profile of the prostitute, in order to create female characters that destabilize inherited models. Thanks to a set of unusual turns, innovative descriptions, and unexpected transgressions, the prostitutes that we find in Revueltas’s last compositions show alternative ways of being a woman....

pp. 144-157. Germany was a constant presence in various stages of the life of Jose Revueltas, for various reasons. The first contact, unintended and ungrateful, was its assistance to the German School, in the capital of the country. The subsequent linkages, already in adult life, were intentional and vertebrated by political practice. The relationship of the activist with the European country was determined by its vision of the world, a complex and emotional ideological assembly...

pp. 63-80. In this article, I will analyze the official homages to Octavio Paz and José Revueltas, particularly the presence of their centennials in the world wide web (official pages and social networks). While Paz is represented in these media as a universal intellectual, the homage to Revueltas underlines his function as a committed writer. These characterizations include the emphasis on aesthetic aspects, in the case of Paz, as well as ideological positions, in that...

pp. 38-46.