Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

In the rural area of ​​the province of Carchi not all people are able to tell the legends of their community. Only a few can do it, namely, those who have seen the divine spirits, call them goblins, widows, aucas or cueches. It can be said, then, that the divine spirits are the ones who empower the narrators in the communities, granting them a gift to be executed by means of his speech. Raised the issue from this religious perspective, this article inquiries about the following issues: why these divine spirits want to be narrated?, by what linguistic statements the narrators give an account of the gift received?, and why it is useful to the community knowing those narrations about the divine spirits? The answers lead us to consider that the divine spirits give that gift to guarantee its existence in the collective memory of the community. But, at the same time, with the gift of that gift they allow the narrators to generate spaces to distribute a knowledge that controls and articulates the meanings that give significance to the community.

This article analyzes the correlation between neoliberalism and reparatory policies implemented in Argentina. It proposes that the ideological effects produced by neoliberalism can be articulated with genocidal social practices as it promotes a particular way of being related to the identity pattern that the genocidal process developed between 1975 and 1983 tried to impose. From this starting point, it addresses the economic reparation policies that were implemented in Argentina after the democratic recovery (1983).The article first presents a characterization of neoliberalism as well as a genealogy of the mentioned reparatory policies. Subsequently, it analyzes the representations that underlie these policies in relation to what is the damage to repair (what is repaired), who are the subjects of that repair (who is repaired) and what are the instruments to carry out this task (how it is repaired). The main conclusion of the article is that the hegemony of neoliberalism is crystallized in the reparatory policies sanctioned in the post-dictatorial period in Argentina.

In this article we reflect on the comic aspect in the novel Los cortejos del diablo (1970), by the Colombian author Germán Espinosa, based on the role played by the inquisitor's madness, Juan de Mañozga, and the degradation he is subjected to by his aulics and servants. To do this, we establish a contrastive analysis between the fictional and historical levels, according to some approaches regarding to the comic aspect proposed by Baudelaire, Bergson, and Bakhtin. The comic aspects that demean Mañozga, and that are associated with witches and demons, justify the presence of the inquisitor in the city of Cartagena, as well as the purpose of the Inquisition.

En Imprentas en la era neoliberal, Daniel Velandia Díaz profundiza en la dinámica de una actividad económica desde una perspectiva local y de forma particular. Este libro coloca como foco de análisis la industria de las artes gráficas en Bogotá y su proceso de transformación a finales del siglo xx y comienzos del siglo xxi. El autor muestra como la nueva estructura impuesta desencadenó nuevas relaciones laborales, demanda de capacidades, conocimientos y tecnología; estas relaciones marcaron esta actividad, así mismo evidenciaron algunas “fallas” de mercado, tales como la ausencia de regulación y competencia desleal, entre otros. Por otra parte, el autor analiza, a partir de la experiencia directa de los involucrados en diferentes roles del sector, las dinámicas jerárquicas en el que hacer laboral, los roles de género, el “aprender haciendo”, entre otras dimensiones que describen a esta industria desde el pasado siglo.

¿Cuáles son los intereses y perspectivas de algunos enfoques antropológicos contemporáneos, alrededor del mundo del trabajo en el siglo xxi? Esta inquietud está en el centro de este número de la revista, aunque también forma parte de las preocupaciones intelectuales de un grupo mayor de investigadoras e investigadores. Recientemente se publicó un trabajo enorme dedicado a investigaciones en antropología del trabajo; el “Tratado latinoamericano de antropología del trabajo” muestra un horizonte amplio en el cual gravitan no solo distintos enfoques de investigación, sino también, intereses por reconocer diversos colectivos sociales que se dedican al trabajo (Ruiz Arrieta et al, 2020). En palabras de Antunes, nos interesa “la clase que vive del trabajo” (2000).

The anthropological profession in organizations and the city creates countless challenges that impact the academic field by promoting reflections on research and academic training. This article includes an itinerary of three tours of a company and its impact on the development of Cali – Colombia. Three objectives were proposed: to analyze the interrelations between urban anthropology and those of business and work organizations from a socio-historical perspective; to Develop reflections based on these relationships and qualitative data collected between 2013 and 2017 in a company that provides public services located in Cali – Colombia; and finally, to compare the behavior of workers before and after the intervention by the Superintendencia de Servicios Públicos (Governmental Controlling Unit). Methodologically, this research was supported by documentary review, in-depth interviews, and participant observation. Some of the results allow us to recognize the Empresas Municipales de Cali EICE ESP with a trajectory of nine decades. Emcali’s indebtedness reached record levels in the period 1998-1999 towards workers, financial institutions, and companies in the sector. During the government’s intervention to Emcali, conflicts increased, and more union labor groups appeared, typicals of labor flexibility. The idea that Emcali was the main “patrimony of Cali’s people” began to be questioned. From the research data presented here, it is argued that anthropologists should increase their concern about understanding the links between companies and cities.

This article is the product of an investigation that aimed to document in the 21st century the Wayuu indigenous healing practices developed in the Wararalain community of the department of La Guajira, Colombia. These practices are carried out by women outsü in ritual contexts, amid social, environmental, security and abandonment problems by the Colombian State, in which the culture and life of all the members of that town is in a constant threat, turning the Wayuu into people with special condition of vulnerability. Being a native anthropologist, I considered that the appropriate methodology should be dialogic, therefore I used the ethnographic method which was enriched with thematic conversations with older people, young people and women curators of the same community, where the spaces of dialogue I assumed as learning and the Wayuu as my mentors. My argument is that Wayuu healing in ritual contexts are characterized by the dialogic and intersubjective relationship between the healing woman -outsü-, her auxiliary spirit -aseyuu-, objects of power, the sick and her family. All this is possible through dreams, voices and songs as part of the healing practice of your health system, as these define the type of disease, how to prevent and cure it. These healing practices in the community are complemented, in some cases, with the sick's assistance to the biomedical system offered by the Colombian State, which has generated dialogues and conflicts between both health systems. The theoretical reference that I used as a guide for research involves complementary analytical fields that have been approached from the anthropological discipline and the social sciences, such as discussions about the symbolic in ritual healing contexts; the dreamlike as a transversal category; shamanism, which problematized and presented the conceptions that different authors have raised and that in the case of the Wayuu this category prevents account of specificities; I also analyze notions of health and disease that some indigenous communities have and that have been reflected in ethnographic research.

The aim of this article is to analyze the different management mechanisms employed in the current processes of heritage activation at the town of Benito Juárez, Buenos Aires province, Argentina. In order to select state and non-state institutions. A qualitative methodology was used to map the institutional field of cultural heritage and select three state and two non-state institutions, as well as two collective groups in the community that carry out heritage management. With an ethnographic approach, based on participant observation and seven in-depth interviews, the main result was to rebuild the network of meanings that is woven within this particular community through participatory processes of heritage activation. As a result we observed two different but complementary ways of conceiving citizen participation within the framework of local cultural heritage management. We were able to identify similarities and differences between the values built around heritage itself, as well as a reiterated emphasis on the importance of linking the local heritage, the identity and the material assets ever since the foundation of the town. Nonetheless, a tendency stands out in community groups towards new logics in constructing heritage meanings, that are different from those proposed by formal organizations.