Vol. 8, No. 16 (2025)

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Editorial

Since its foundation, the editorial project of Encartes contemplated the mission of promoting research done with diverse registers. Issue 16 marks eight years of publication and presents the dossier "Image, memory and representation" with seven articles by RIAV-CIESAS that explore the relevance of images in the configuration of memories and identity imaginaries, ranging from pictorial art and photographic archives to popular traditions such as carnival and dance.

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Temáticas

Image, Memory and Representation

Presentation

  • Nahayeilli B. Juarez Huet
  • Claudia Lora Krstulovic
  • Laura Machuca Gallegos

In this issue of Encartes we present a selection of the most recent contributions of the CIESAS Audiovisual Research Network, as well as those of researchers who have been linked to it through various programs and collaborative projects and from different latitudes and fields of action. Some of these contributions are the result of years of research, while others are part of projects currently under development.

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Dossier

Between the visual and the narrated: approaches to the collection of photographs of Mexico at the American Historical Exposition of 1892.

  • Marisol Domínguez González

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Uses and meanings of the female portrait in the Guatemalan press, 1890-1924. Making social history with images: a methodological proposal.

  • Paulina Pezzat Sánchez

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Mérida's carnival in 1913, social contrasts of a city through the lens of a German photographer

  • Laura Oliva Machuca Gallegos

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Companies of Negritos. Representations of "lo negro" in the theatrical scene of Mérida during the first decades of the 20th century.

  • Luisangel García Yeladaqui

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The Documentary as Witness: Dance Memories in the Costa Chica (part 1)

  • Rosa Claudia Lora Krstulovic

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From the bottom of a shoebox, a trickle of memory emerges: some photographs on rural communication.

  • Daniel Murillo Licea

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Lo prieto: Antiracism, sexogenic dissidence and self-representation in the work of two Mexican visual artists.

  • Itza Amada Varela Huerta

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Realidades socioculturales

Projecting the Promise: Film and Railroads in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

  • Gabriela Zamorano

This article analyzes a selection of film and audiovisual records documenting two different moments in the history of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Railroad. The materials analyzed include a film on the inauguration of the route by Porfirio Díaz in 1907 and official videos recently produced to promote this work. From perspectives shared in film and infrastructure studies around notions of excess, contingency and uncertainty, I examine how, within the framework of two different political projects that could be understood as antagonistic, these types of materials have constituted artifices that seek to materialize promises of development around plans for regional development and greater national and international integration.

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Between Sinophobia and Mythology, an essay on visual anthropology and social networks.

  • Arturo Humberto Gutiérrez del Ángel

This visual anthropology essay explores the hate speech and mythological narratives circulating in Mexican social networks in relation to the Chinese presence in Mexico. Through the analysis of memes, images and digital content, it examines how stereotypical representations are constructed and disseminated that feed contemporary Sinophobia, while creating new urban mythologies in the digital space.

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Flexible capitalism: biographical diagrams and suicide in Quintana Roo

  • Eliana Cardenas Mendez

Through biographical diagrams, this article analyzes the life trajectories of people who have experienced suicidal ideation in the context of the flexible capitalism of tourism in Quintana Roo. It explores how precarious working conditions, internal migration and the structural violence of the tourist economic system affect mental health and configure new forms of social vulnerability in the Mexican Caribbean.

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An audio-visual tour of the ethnography of musical cultures in Oaxaca (ECMO)

  • Sergio Navarrete Pellicer

The article offers a description of the ECMO project and an audiovisual journey through its archive, emphasizing the musical diversity of the state of Oaxaca, its genres, repertoires and instrumental endowments, as well as its uses, contexts, musical occasions, conditions of musical practice and agents involved in its production and consumption. The purpose of this exhibition is to invite the public to consult this collection online in the media library of the national phonotheque.

Encartes multimedia

Curations of the self. The [Afro]descent in question

  • Nahayeilli Juarez

Through photographs, interviews, life stories and a dialogic methodology based on horizontality, this visual ethnography reconstructs diverse forms of identification and self-representation that refer, in different ways, to Afro-descendence and its supposed somatic marks. All of this is situated in a regional, urban and contemporary context, historically associated with the Mayan as a dominant alterity and as a foundational component of local identity. The objective is to understand, from the experiences and perspectives of a Yucatecan woman, how the marks of belonging and identity operate in relation to social hierarchies and self-representation, as well as the processes involved in the appropriation or rejection of the categories associated with these marks.

Photographic Essay

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The dynamics of salvation goods in the cult of Jesus Malverde: A photographic essay on popular religiosity in Mexico.

  • Arturo Fabian Jimenez

Through a visual journey through the spaces of devotion to Jesus Malverde, this photographic essay documents the complex dynamics of the salvation goods that circulate around this figure of Mexican popular religiosity. The images capture the rituals, offerings, votive offerings and devotional practices that reveal how the faithful construct and maintain a symbolic economy of exchange with the "bandit saint". The photographic work was carried out in various shrines and places of worship, showing the materiality of faith and the ways in which the hope of salvation is articulated in contexts of social marginality.

Photographic Essay

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Entrevistas

Yasuaki Yamashita and the Search for a Culture of Peace: Lessons from Nagasaki

  • Yasuaki Yamashita

  • Greta Alvarado and José Luis Pérez

Yasuaki Yamashita was born in Nagasaki in 1939, six years before the two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan. Yamashita has dedicated himself to sharing his testimony, contributing to the preservation of historical memory about the bombing and advocating for peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Her efforts have been instrumental in educating new generations about the devastating consequences of nuclear war and raising awareness of the need for a world without nuclear weapons.

A new breed open to the future: Melchor Peredo's mural in La Antigua

  • Melchor Peredo

  • Charles da Silva and Paula Carvalho

In this interview, muralist Melchor Peredo shares his experience in the creation of the mural "Una nueva raza abierta al porvenir" located in La Antigua, Guatemala. Peredo discusses the creative process, the aesthetic and political influences that shaped this work, as well as his vision of the role of mural art in the construction of identity narratives in Latin America. The conversation explores the tensions between tradition and modernity that run through both muralist technique and representations of mestizaje in contemporary art.

Discrepancias

psicodélicos

Holistic well-being or cultural extractivism? Who decides? Questions on the consumption of psychedelic substances and their territorial impacts in Latin America.

  • Coordinated by Paola Garnica

  • Participants Saraí Piña, Juan Scuro and Alí Cortina Bello

This debate examines the tensions between holistic wellness practices based on the use of psychedelic substances and the dynamics of cultural extractivism that these can generate in Latin American territories. Participants discuss who has the authority to decide on the use, commercialization and regulation of sacred plants and psychoactive substances, analyzing the impacts on the indigenous communities that are custodians of this ancestral knowledge. The conversation addresses the ethical, legal and cultural complexities that arise when traditional spiritual practices are inserted into globalized wellness and psychedelic tourism markets.

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Reseñas críticas

Amare: a look at migration on the Costa Chica

  • Ana Isabel León Fernández

This review analyzes the short film Amare (2024) by Oaxacan filmmaker Balam Toscano, a work that addresses migration from the perspective of the Afro-Mexican communities of Oaxaca's Costa Chica. Through an intimate and poetic narrative, the film explores the family tensions, dashed dreams and difficult decisions faced by young people in rural contexts marked by a lack of opportunities. León Fernández examines how Toscano constructs an authentic representation of the Afro-Mexican experience, moving away from stereotypes to show the emotional and social complexity of internal migration in Mexico.

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The hinge in the religious phenomenon: the diversity of the sacred in contemporary Mexico.

  • María Fernanda Apipilhuasco Miranda

In this review of the book "De la religiosidad vivida a la religiosidad bisagra. Experiences of the Sacred in Contemporary Mexico", coordinated by Nahayeilli Juárez Huet, Renée de la Torre and Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga, Apipilhuasco Miranda analyzes the central concepts of lived religiosity and hinge religiosity as methodological tools to understand religious diversity in Mexico. The author highlights how this long-term research manages to capture the subjective experiences of faith and spiritual practices in the country, offering a complex and nuanced panorama of the contemporary Mexican religious field.

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Contrasted transgender female subjectivities (urban and rural) in two Brazilian film narratives: Laerte-se and Paloma.

  • Mauricio Sánchez Álvarez

Mauricio Sánchez Álvarez analyzes two Brazilian film productions that address the experiences of transgender women in urban and rural contexts. Through the documentary Laerte-se (2017) and the feature film Paloma (2017), the author examines how contemporary Brazilian cinema constructs complex representations of trans subjectivities, exploring the differences between urban and rural experiences of gender transition. The review reflects on the narrative and aesthetic strategies employed by both films to address issues of identity, family, social acceptance, and the particular challenges faced by transgender women in different geographical and sociocultural contexts in Brazil.

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Director

Ángela Renée de la Torre Castellanos

Edition

Emilia Diaz Corona Centeno

Correction

Cecilia Palomar

Isabel Orendáin

Design and layout

Veronica Segovia

Wordpress Desing

Arthur Temporal Ventura

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