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

In dialogue with a 1985 article by Davi Arrigucci Jr., this piece constitutes a rereading of Borges’s “A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874),” from the perspective of the question of identity. Starting with the observation that Tadeo Isidoro is a case of internal colonialism, as per the definition of Pablo González Casanova, the conclusion drawn from the situation of Isidoro is that it amounts to an attempt to escape such a condition. As in other short stories by Borges’s, this attempt fails. Behind the figure of Tadeo Isidoro, it becomes apparent that there is a melancholic but skeptical narrator one who is neither the colonizer nor the colonized but rather “colonial”, much like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, whom Borges greatly admired.

This is the first part of my interview with Professor Ana Pizarro, dated on October 15, 2019. On October 17, Ana Pizarro went back to Brazil, to the Amazon, and one day later it began the biggest social uprising Chile has witnessed in the last 30 years. In this kind of interview, in which we introduce the reader the trajectory of the interviewed, apart from the first, the interviewer’s questions are withdrawn to give more fluidity to the narration, leaving thus the scene to the person of our interest.

At its inception, the idea of civilization was imbued with a sense of progress, peace, and optimism. The historical record, however, belies much of this sense of optimism. Somewhat paradoxically, civilization has come to be closely associated with conflict and conquest. In the two-hundred-and-sixty years since the term was coined, many things have been done in the name of civilization; sadly, among them are such grave matters as war, conquest, and colonialism.

From the eighteenth century on, the notions of civilization and progress became central pillars of modernity. These ideas, together with the concept of race, became legitimizing factors of colonial expansion and the establishment of hierarchies among peoples. The power of these ideas was overwhelming; however, their validity did not go unchallenged. Early on they were taken to task, with the Haitian Revolution being one of the most important instances. That revolution promoted revolutionary ideas, but it lacked intellectuals–a void that was filled after 1804, with the emergence of a group of critical thinkers, of which Jean Louis Vastey was one of the most significant. A politician and prolific author, he wrote more than ten books in which he challenged a dominant culture that enslaved Africans, and even criticized post-independence Haiti. His writing followed the example of the slave insurrection and critically appropriated European culture. With his pen, enlightenment and Christianity were subverted, and the ideas of civilization and progress partially decolonized. The ideas he put forth were as important as they were forgotten. Therefore, in this article, I intend to free Vastey from the grips of historical amnesia, by analyzing the scope of his critical reflections. In so doing, my aim is to show that, in many ways, Vastey foreshadowed the ideas typical of postcolonial and decolonial theories.

The following article analyzes and describes the alliances and pacts made by Peruvian and Chilean authorities with the different racial and ethnic groups that participated in the War of the Pacific. The perspective adopted herein is that the war created a space for negotiations and alliances in which indigenous groups, campesinos, Chinese and Afro-Peruvians became involved in the postcolonial pacts struck during the conflict. Accordingly, this article seeks to approach these alliances and negotiations as “postcolonial pacts” in order to interrogate the reconfiguration of colonial power relations between subaltern groups and the Peruvian and Chilean authorities. In this sense, the aim is to prompt new research questions related to the study of popular nationalisms and their impact on the construction of postcolonial Chile and Peru.