pp. 51-63 The debate around the concept of world literature, held with new intensity in the last twenty years, is part, within the framework of cultural studies, of the controversies that are closely associated with issues related to global networks in a polycentric world. In view of this, this article would first of all like to open the field of tension between the concepts of world literature and literature of the world, with the purpose...

pp. 91-106 This study is dedicated to the prologue Octavio Paz wrote for the second Mexican edition of Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), entitled “La mirada anterior.” It discusses a problematic of great relevance for Paz which, however, was thoroughly underestimated by the major part of scholarly work on the Mexican author. At issue is Paz’ interest in psychoactive phenomena in relationship to cultural creation and, especially, regarding...

pp. 166-178 Parting from an event at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe/ Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in Des Plaines Illinois, near Chicago, this article shows how this sacred space acquired cross-cultural political significance for the struggle of Mexican migrants in the United States. It explores the connection between the religious symbol of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the political activism of Mexican migrants. Its political significance is a historically rooted notion that...

pp. 80-97. Corruption is a problem that institutions all over the world experience to a greater or lesser degree. The issue is particularly severe in Latin America and, especially, in Mexico where it mixes with the violence exerted by drug cartels. Given its social costs, it is vital to acquire knowledge about the determinants of corruption and the behavioral factors underlying people´s corruptibility to combat it effectively. Complementing traditional approaches to the study corruption, such...

pp. 20-32. This article throws light on various shifts in the meaning of corruption. I argue that colonial Mexicans originally understood corruption by and large as an obstacle to finding justice. During the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the idea of corruption began to expand beyond the judiciary and included breaches in the administration for self-benefit. After independence, a third concept emerged, as the idea began including manipulations of the electoral process. In addition,...

pp. 107-116 This article explores the travel writing of Amado Nervo in El éxodo y las flores del camino, the 1902 volume that colects the sketches of a 1900 trip to the World Fair in Paris, both in prose and in verse. In my reading I privilege the «absential»: instead of the tourist magnets, the way that they let down Nervo, and the way he writes about it with peculiar sincerity. This sincere articulation of...

pp. 70-83 Illness and disability are recurring motifs in the novel Teoría de las catástrofes (2012) by the Mexican author Tryno Maldonado. The story, which develops during the Oaxaca protests in 2006, reflects the literary use of bodily insubordination as an allegory of collective political resistance. Taking into account the disability studies theory as well as the concept of biopolitics ­–that has allowed the State to exert violence against the members of the social body...

pp. 23-69 On the occasion of the bicentenary of the Mexican Declaration of Independence in 1821, this article aims to examine the extent to which political and social processes, the gradual emergence of a public space and the increasingly dynamic development of the press interacted in the run-up to this event. The study reveals that in the course of the formation of a public opinion in the sense of Habermas, many periodicals saw themselves as...

pp. 48-65. The consequences of corruption and wealth inequality are multiples and among of the most painful are the increase of violence. Mexico is a case in point, where these elements combined are causing thousands of deaths, millions of people living with less than a dollar per day, while 10% of Mexico’s richest concentrates 64.4% the country’s wealth. The main objective of this paper is to describe the relation between political corruption and income inequality...

pp. 53-67. Ensayo de un crimen is a film in which nothing is what it seems. Buñuel seduces us with his mysterious and disconcerting universe, and with his intimate look into the lives of his protagonists, who lose themselves in a surreal labyrinth of truncated plans. The following analysis will illustrate through structure and narrative the main constellations formed by the protagonist and the motley female characters and will clarify the relationship between victims and...

pp. 96-113.

pp. 11-32. The Lord's Prayer is a long-established literary theme in European literature. Its literary manifestations range from the almost literal devotional paraphrase to the burlesque and subversive recreation; and from the cultured expressions, heirs of the rich exegetical tradition around this prayer, to those of a more popular vein, derived from an equally rich oral tradition. In my article I refer to a selection of glossed Lord's Prayers, of popular vein, which belong to...

pp. 68-85. Women who kill or take control of a drug cartel have moved into the center of interest of television producers. With series such as Mujeres asesinas or La reina del sur, television tries to show that it has already overcome the melodramatic tradition that qualifies women either as self-sacrificing victims or as ‘devourers’. These series propose that the female gender not only suffers the aggression of men or seduces them with their ‘own...

pp. 100-110. The objective of this paper is to analyze the realistic strategies and the female perspective on Perra brava, by Orfa Alarcón, a young writer from Monterrey, Mexico. The novel unfolds against a backdrop of social unrest that results from violence caused by drug trafficking networks that extend throughout the country. Special attention is paid to the extent to which her narrative offers a reading different to the reductionist explanations engendered by the media....

58-73 This paper seeks to trace the development of the events surrounding the emergence of the Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad en México, which arose following the murder of the son of Mexican poet Javier Sicilia. The movement has awakened the solidarity and mobilization of sectors of Mexican society seeking to put a stop to the so-called "war against drug trafficking", as well as relatives of victims have joined together to give...

pp. 19-31. Moriremos como soles by the Mexicali author Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz is a historical novel that sets out to tell the story of a "forgotten" revolution that took place in Baja California during the historical period known as the Mexican Revolution. This paper is dedicated to analyze the meanings attributed in the novel to the Mexicali/Caléxico and Tijuana/San Diego areas as spaces marked by a boundary: the Northern Border. Its proposal is that the...

pp. 12-18. Traducción por Maribel Saldaña Márquez

pp. 32-46. In order to show how violent acts transform the geography of a border space, this essay examines the representation of violence in literary texts that define the US-Mexican border. In these narratives the characters’ continuous physical movement and personal interactions reaffirm or challenge hierarchal political and social power relations. These characters also search for a way to control their economic production, as well as the space that they physically occupy. The narration of...

pp. 86-108. This article analyzes the social representations on the migration phenomenon and labor issues present in Ken Loach’s Bread and Roses (2000). It explores and compares the director’s discourse (creative instance), the producer’s synopsis, and the synopses made by the viewers (receiving instance) after watching the film within the framework of a university course, "Cinema and migrations". The analysis is made from the perspective of reception theory and critical discourse analysis.

pp. 90-105. The present study mainly addresses the issue of Central American feminine transmigration of Mexican soil in direction of the USA. For this, the author pursues a historical reconstruction of this migration process, a phenomenon that intensified during the second half of the nineteenth century and continued to rise in a gradual manner throughout the entire twentieth century reaching a new peak in the 2010’s. This process got traversed by political events that framed...

pp. 69-84. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the legislative process of the Telecommunications Reform in Mexico. This reform was carried out in two moments: during 2013 several amendments and additions were made to some articles of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, while in 2014 the adaptation of the regulatory laws took place. The analysis focuses on the media as a pressure group capable of conferring legitimacy to...

pp. 155-165 This article studies the Sephardic sphere in the work of Myriam Moscona (Mexico City, 1955). It begins with an overview of this writer’s works, and then concentrates on two of her fundamental books on the subject: Tela de sevoya (2012) and Ansina (2015). The idea of displacement or wandering is explored not only as a family motive but also as the engine that nurtures the various explorations that Moscona has carried out throughout...

pp. 212-229 Over the last several years the need for transparency has grown in demand, generally and globally, in the hopes of a better future. However, such a promise can never entirely fulfilled for factual as well as ontological reasons. Based on the analysis of the painted picture, Sandra del Pilar (visual artist and art theorist) defines transparency as a specific property of all the representative media that tend to become invisible with respect to...