Editorial: No. 18

We joyfully celebrate that Encartes The journal reaches its 18th issue with a special section titled “Breaking Paradigms: The Ex-voto, a Heritage in Resistance and Transmutation,” edited by Caroline Perrée. This dossier presents four proposals for studying the ex-voto from the perspective of its materiality, as it offers unimaginable possibilities in the aesthetic realm, including new needs for expressing situations that do not take place within religious spaces, as can be seen in the altarpiece selected to illustrate the journal’s cover. Furthermore, the ex-voto embodies the renewed challenge facing contemporary anthropology: to take seriously an analysis centered on materialities, aesthetics, and the image. This shift takes on astonishing relevance when we view ex-votos not only as images but as materialities that mediate the interaction between the visible and the invisible, between human and non-human beings (miraculous deities or spirits). Another challenge in the new paradigms for approaching the ex-voto is to recognize it as both an object and an aesthetic act. In short, all of these perspectives can be found in the various articles that make up this issue.

The essay by José Cláudio Alves Oliveira, titled “Votive Offerings as Objects and Active Memory: Contributions by Halbwachs and Latour,” invites us to view votive offerings as a material medium of collective memory, as they serve as a rich testament to local, regional, and national histories. However, this does not negate the fact that votive offerings are finding new applications in areas that expand their religious use and meaning, such as art, the marketplace, fashion, and advertising. For her part, Patricia Fogelman reminds us that shrines are places where ex-votos are brought and, at the same time, are themselves ex-votos when they were built to fulfill a promise in response to a miracle received. In “Votive Offering, Bastion, and Shrine: Between History, Autoethnography, and a Visit to the National Basilica of Luján (Argentina),” the author delves into the history of that country’s most important shrine to explain that it was built as a votive offering at the end of the century xix. Diana María Perea Romo’s essay introduces us to votive offerings in the context of the chapel of Jesús Malverde, a popular saint (who has not been canonized nor is he promoted by the Catholic Church) associated with violence and organized crime. Her article “Asking for and Giving Thanks for Miracles Granted: The History, Practices, and Social Content of Votive Offerings at the Chapel of Jesús Malverde” introduces us to the new requests and expressions of gratitude that devotees direct toward this saint. Finally, Carlos Nazario Mora Duro moves from shrines to the internet and acknowledges the transformation of ex-votos—not only from physical images to digital media but also as a medium for new themes. His essay “Thanks to the Virgin: Votive Offerings on the Internet and Digital Religion in Baroque Modernity” explores the virtual altarpieces that make use of the ethos Baroque style to convey themes of social transgression.

The “Realities” section contains two articles. The first is titled “Testimony of Barbarism: Mass Graves as Micro-Spaces of Exception in Northern Chihuahua, Mexico, 2008–2024,” written by Salvador Salazar and Vladimir Hernández, which analyzes a sensitive yet very real and growing issue in Mexico: the clandestine graves reported in northern Chihuahua, a state that, according to the Paso del Norte Human Rights Center, accounts for half of all such graves recorded between 2008 and 2009, as an expression of the atrocious violence and forced disappearances in Mexico. The authors conclude that clandestine graves contain not only bodies but also territorial markers, and that their existence instills a “pedagogy of horror” in the territory. The second, titled “Bureaucracy as a Border: Higher Education, Deportation, and the Liminal Citizenship of the homies ”In Mexico" is by Ricardo Alfonso Zepeda Orozco, who addresses a reality that deserves our attention: the way in which deportation extends its punitive mechanisms to school offices that extend beyond the U.S. border.

The Multimedia section features two audiovisual essays: “Dyeing Silence: Audiovisual and Textile Narratives of Gambian Women Through the batik”, by Martha Ileana Landeros Casillas, which is based on the life stories of women from Lamin, The Gambia, that were told and shared through the batik, implemented as a dialogic and horizontal tool for generating knowledge within a women’s group. This proposal presents art as a legitimate act of knowledge in which shared memories, identities, and experiences can be inscribed and articulated. For its part, “Los tatuajes de la Santa Muerte” (The Tattoos of Santa Muerte), written by Gustavo Morello, is a documentary that explores tattooing as an act of faith, linking it to other devotional religious practices taking place in the Tepito neighborhood and the town of Tultitlán (State of Mexico), home to two of Mexico’s most important Santa Muerte shrines. Santa Muerte is a figure of popular devotion, whose followers find shelter and protection amid the urban maelstrom. The tattoo can be done as a votive act, taking on an intimate meaning when inked on the body of someone fulfilling a vow as a sign of their faith.

“Interviews” presents “From the Couch to the Confessional,” an interview conducted by Renée de la Torre with Fernando M. González, in which the two situations are compared, revealing parallels and profound differences that deserve to be acknowledged in the social sciences. Meanwhile, Yael Dansac presents her interview with Paul Stoller on the “sensory turn in anthropology.”.

The “Discrepancies” section was moderated by Olga Odgers and focused on examining the legal and regulatory mechanisms at borders that paralyze migratory flows and function as traps or prisons for migrants. Under the theme “Lives in Limbo: Cross-Perspectives on Migrants Trapped at Borders,” Lorenzo Ghione, Florence Boyer, Harouna Mounkaila, and Olga Odgers were invited to reflect on the impact of contemporary migration policies on the immobilization of migrants. These scholars are familiar with this situation in three distant contexts—the southern Mediterranean, the Sahara Desert, and the U.S.-Mexico border—which, while facing similar policies, experience different effects and consequences. The questions that shaped this dialogue were as follows: What specific mechanism (political, legal, or administrative) plays a central role in creating situations of migratory “stranding,” and which populations are primarily affected? What are the effects of these situations of entrapment on the people affected, particularly in terms of living conditions or access to rights? To what extent do the migration policies currently implemented in their respective contexts contribute to reducing these situations of entrapment or, on the contrary, to producing and prolonging them? To what extent can the situations of entrapment observed in your context be analyzed through the lens of the interplay between ethics and national law? How should these situations be characterized, and what responsibilities do they entail for states?

We couldn't leave out the "Reviews" section featuring three new book releases. Juan Felipe Guevara Aristizábal reviews the book War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia, by Lina Pinto García, published in 2025 by the University of Chicago Press. Adriana Mata Puente, in her review “How to Teach or How to Learn History?”, discusses the anthology Education, Heritage, and History: Reflections on Interpretation, Teaching Culture, and the Past, edited by Pedro Ortiz Oropeza and Amílcar Carpio Pérez, published in 2025 by Newton Edición y Tecnología Educativa. Finally, Ignacio Salvador Durán and Natalia Zepeda Cazarez invite us to read this new release Listening as a Method: The Scope and Prospects of Oral History (2024), edited by Graciela de Garay and Jorge Aceves, a publication of the Mora Institute.

We hope you enjoy reading, viewing, and listening to the content offered in this new edition of Encartes. We trust that the selection of material will allow readers to discover new perspectives for study, to consider analyses that invite us to reflect from vantage points other than the conventional ones, but also to recognize that some seemingly traditional topics are not only undergoing transformation but are also being approached from different conceptual, methodological, and epistemological angles. You will find all of this in this issue of the journal Encartes.

Welcome!

Renée de la Torre

September 2026