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

This article reconstructs and analyses the first modernization processes of formal retail tradein Chile (1890-1930), delving into the relations of this sector with the economic developmentmodel of the period, wholesale trade, and the prototypical forms of sales work thatthis scale of trade developed. Thus, based on a broad analysis of sources and bibliography,approached from an interdisciplinary perspective, it discusses the way in which theseprocesses implied the introduction of new “modern and scientific models” of organizingcommercial activity. These new models, which included strategies of bureaucratization,rationalization, and standardization, were installed as central parameters, thus contributingto understanding the history of labour in the Chilean commerce sector and situating thecurrent forms of retail trade in the country as part of a long-lasting process.

This article seeks to publicize a series of sixteen letters written by the Chilean diplomat Máximo Lira to her friend Isabel Errázuriz. These were donated to the Academia Chilena de la Historia after being preserved by the Errázuriz family. These letters were written from the Chilean front during the War of the Pacific, specifically between 1879 and 1881. Through the contextualization of the recovered epistolary, the author sets forth the biographical perspective of Máximo Lira during the war. Accordingly, this military testimony allows access to the experiences of the conflict’s actors, along with a geographical description of the occupied area, in the Peruvian region of Moquegua.

This article attempts to make known the Epistolary, up to now inedited, of Sister Josefa de los Dolores Peña y Lillo, Cnun from the XVIIIth century. Her text constituted by sixty-five letters, addressed to her father confessor, the Jesuit Manuel Álvarez. These letters are kept in the Archive of the Dominican Monastery of Santa Rosa de Lima in Santiago, Chile. The letters seem a manifestation of confessional discourse which the nuns had to write by order of their father confessors or ecclesiastical authorities. However, the Epistolary analysis reveals the transformations of that pattern, which Sor Josefa's writing constitutes itself in the support of a self-knowledge process and in a construction of woman identity, which is not recognized only in her religious vocation and virtues, but also in her knowing capacity, wisdom, and words management.

The primacy of masculine gender in almost every domain of culture is a universal phenomenon: men and women participate in differentiated value systems which, according to Marvin Harris, are grounded in the exclusive practice of war by men. This article investigates this gender inequality in the mapuche value system, which is consequence of the armed conflicts inside of it. Through reading colonial texts, the author proposes that the mapuche society in the Conquest days was not an exception, and the ideology behind their social practices determined an asymmetry between masculine and feminine genders.

This article presents a complete panoramic vision about the discovery and exploitation of gold in the meridional region of America, from a description of its different mining periods: Las Minas River (1869), Boquerón mountains (1881), Zanja a Pique (1884), Páramo (1887), Sloggett Bay (1887) and Southern Islands (1890). Also, the author provides an account of the commonly named “golden fever”: This is the origin, development and decline of mechanic miners between 1903 and 1908, especially in relation to Tierra del Fuego Island, where the activity generated a lot of frustrations and failures. Likewise, the text describes the development of craft miners before and after 1900, until 1950, when the whole historic auriferous exploitation finished. Lastly, the article reflects and evaluates the historic auriferous production as well as the demographic, economic and politic consequences of this auriferous activity in Magallanes.

The present article shows the social, economic, and political evolution of the city of Iquique during the period of the Peruvian administration, from its origin as a small village of native fishermen to the beginning of the blockade by the Chilean Navy in 1879, by which time it had become one of the most important and cosmopolitan ports on the West Coast of South America. Through the study of the governors’ management, the author propounds the spectacular development of the city is due to the local governors’ intercession and the individual interests of its inhabitants, as well as the geopolitical circumstances brought upon by the saltpeter mining.

Press historians have periodically regarded the foundation of El Mercurio newspaper in Santiago in 1900 as the turning point at which the modernization of the Chilean press began. However, most of it their analysis has omitted a key factor: To show that this newspaper's entrepreneurial and journalistic proposal faced in its early stages many hardships and ups-and-downs. The beginnings of this newspaper were a story in themselves. With that hypothesis in mind and based on the newspaper founder's letter exchange, this investigation seeks to demonstrate that El Mercurio took more than three years to become the newspaper that has been hailed by press historians. 

The main objective of this article is to analyze the characteristics of the political and socialdevelopment of the dominant sectors that led the civil war that occurred during theIndependence of Chile in the Aconcagua region. The results reflect that the independenceprocess in the territorial space studied was led by the middle sectors, a heterogeneousgroup in economic and social terms, who allied themselves passively and ambivalently,both to the insurgent and to the royalist side. This conflict is shown to be rooted in thecomplex political culture rather than “social class”. This dominant sector will be replaced,once independence is proclaimed, by the group of large landowners, related to the elite of Santiago. The sources used are the municipal archives of San Felipe, the Sesionesde los Cuerpos Legislativos, the Archivo de Don Bernardo O’Higgins, the collectionof José Ignacio Víctor Eyzaguirre, and the newspapers El Monitor Araucano and LaGazeta del Gobierno de Chile.

How did a young girl, almost unknows to the great majority of the inhabitants of Lima, who lived as a semi recluse, become a saint just after her death, venerated by hundreds who came to play homage and approach her body to obtain relics and the cure of disease? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes the role played by Luisa de Melgarejo, the circumstances surrounding the death of the girl, and the infleunce of the Dominican Order in generating a climate of opinion which made possible the start of the beatification process. An important element in this last, is the life of Rosa written by a member of that order a few days after her death, and which can which can be considered her first hagiography.

The European encounter with the new American space and it species during the sixteenth century, allows us to look at the European percepction of superiority towards exotic worlds in a more complex way. European description of American nature, the first visual images of the local species described with the colors of paradise, exotism and beauty, fertility and abundance, help in constructing a positive image of America. Despite the original disdain or indifference towards the indigenous food, these percepctions will change over time when many of these products become a solution to world wide hunger and important ingredients for national gastronomies.