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

The book deals with the formation of a joint venture of capital goods after the Second World War and part of the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) process that occurred in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. The National Factory of Textile Machinery Toyoda de México, S. A. de C. V. known as Toyoda de México was established in May 1954 with a share capital of 35 million pesos at the time, 99,4% contributed by Japanese investors and the remaining 0,6 % Nacional Financiera and Mexican investors. The company was part of the Combinado Industrial Sahagún and the authors show why it lasted so little time and analyze it as an example of business failure in Latin America.

In the geographical descriptions of the Spanish cosmographers and chronicles of the 16th and 17th centuries, one can detect the first attempts at scientific theorizing about the empirical causes that explain the climate of the torrid and temperate zone of the New World, specifically for the southern hemisphere. In this way, in the works of Pedro Cieza de León and the Jesuits José de Acosta, Bernabé Cobo and Alonso de Ovalle, are presented the first indications of climatic principles deduced through experimentation and proposition of theories to explain the diverse climatic phenomenon observed in the New World. In this sense, these authors developed the first theories about precipitation, the moderating effect of the ocean, the vertical gradient of temperature and atmospheric pressure, and that they have not been sufficiently studied by current historiography.

The article examines what the author calls ‘the dispute about words and things’: that is, the Mid-Nineteenth Century international debate on the location of Spanish American ideas and Neogranadan Liberalism (1849-1853). The debate sought to define the position occupied by European ideas in Spanish America and its correspondence, or lack thereof, with the continent’s reality. The dispute’s principal arguments are organized and unpacked via the comparison and juxtaposition of manifold primary sources such as periodicals and pamphlets: it analyzes how European ideas in Spanish America were accused of being (1) extemporaneous, (2) artificial and (3) potentially barbarous and bloody, before inspecting (4) the reasoned replies wielded by the Neogranadan Liberals, forced to refute their critics and re-think their peculiar position as Spanish American intellectuals. The text offers a structured introduction to a very complex, and still present ad vital, debate in which many actors intervened; and it contributes to Spanish American Intellectual History exploring how it was conceived, invisibilized and legitimated during a crucial juncture –the 1850’s– characterized by rising imperialism, a vague consolidation of a ‘Latin American conscience’ and vigorous political and social mobilization.

This essay offers a new reading about the historiographical relation between Spain and Latin America. It is about knowing to what extent the cultural relations between them have been modified. This considering the recent reconfigurations of world geopolitics and historiography. In principle, the answer is sought from a nuanced contrast between Hispanism represented by Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo and Rafael Altamira, still dominant around 1970; and its progressive fading due to the political, economic, and cultural crises of the following years, framed by what is known as globalization. The entry into this new scenario has questioned the importance of all kinds of nationalism, localism, nativism, or ethnocentrism dominant in the previous period. In particular, the questions points to the ways of focusing on the relationships between what is one's own and what is foreign, what is inside and what is outside, what is current and what has already happened or could become. To exemplify the latter, reference is made to the historiographical experience carried out around the Iberconceptos network already located in a post-Francoist and post-revolutionary period.

In recent years, the actions leading by university youth in many parts of the world during 1968 have been presented as a propitious context to evaluate the trajectory of some widely known student movements in Latin America, and to highlight their political conquests in processes of democratization of public universities and societies in the region during the second half of the 20th century. A consolidated and prolific tradition of research on the history of the Latin American student movement exposes this event as the founding myth of student organizations in specific areas of the region and presents it as a critical juncture for understanding student identities at a transnational level. Despite the undeniable value of this context, characterized by the actions and ideas of the student movement in the region and elsewhere in the world, and despite the valuable contribution of the analyses dedicated to this topic, the truth is that, traditionally, this approach has paid limited attention to the study of the Central American case: before this current of research, the history and memories of the region appear on the margins of the historiographies with the longest tradition in Latin America. To reflect on the contributions and possibilities for studying the student movement in Central America, this article explores the most outstanding historiographic visions of this field of study and reflects on its most significant memories at the Latin American level. The article exposes the historiographical productions on the Central American case and explains the place of memory occupied by the Central American student movements for Latin American historiography. Finally, this text outlines some trends and possibilities of analysis, which allow us to understand the memories, history and historiographies of a student movement that played a leading role in contexts of change during the second half of the 20thcentury.

The objective of the article is to review in a general way the history of the transversal road towards the Central Coast of Oaxaca, Mexico, throughout the nineteenth century, from the logic of regional history. The text shows two general moments in which the port of Huatulco, initially, and Puerto Ángel, later, were the points of articulation of the road, many times as part of interoceanic communication projects. None of the specific projects materialized, due to various factors, especially political and economic, which can be identified in the text. However, this look shows an extremely significant role of the road project in the projections of a communications system in that period. One of the main contributions of the text is precisely to explore from a critical perspective, distant from the conventional centralist vision. Among the collections consulted are the Hemeroteca Nacional de México, the Hemeroteca Manuel Brioso y Candiani, Hemeroteca Digital de la Biblioteca Nacional de España, Biblioteca Fray Francisco de Burgoa and the Mapoteca Manuel Orozco y Berra.

The article explores the tension between the separation of State and church, and the collaboration between religious ministers and civil figures in the novel Christmas in the mountains (1871) by Ignacio Manuel Altamirano. Based on this element and revisionist historiography, it reviews the prevailing interpretation of official historiography regarding both freedom of worship and independence between the Catholic Church and political authority during the restored republic. Likewise, it identifies the type of ethics, secular or religious, present in the novel within a context that is very favorable to a secular vision of virtue. As a whole, the text addresses the moral theme, very present in nineteenth-century discourses and stories, but relatively absent from Mexican research, from a contextual perspective.