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

This article presents an overview of civil society organizations (CSOs) that carry out activities in the field of human rights in the state of Yucatan, with the aim of helping to understand their work and how they can have an impact on improving the human rights situation in the state. A mixed study was carried out, which in its quantitative phase allowed us to characterize the general profile of CSOs and in its qualitative phase to know the particularities of the work they carry out. The results allow us to dimension the actions that CSOs carry out in the area of human rights, as well as to identify aspects that are not being sufficiently addressed and may represent areas of opportunity for CSOs to increase their participation as elements of change towards a significant transformation in human rights in Yucatan.

This review was part of the presentation of the book during the Anthropology Week at the Faculty of Anthropological Sciences of the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán. As part of the invited members, I offered a complete review for the book where I sought to highlight the coordinating and academic work of Dr. Gabriel Angelotti Pasteur as well as the participation of multiple Latin American voices in a volume with 17 chapters, written by 39 authors in 409 pages while the covid 19 pandemic was occurring. 

Este artículo tiene el objetivo de mostrar algunos conceptos fundamentales de la enfermedad, la salud y las terapias preventivas y curativas en la cosmovisión maya yucateca, en particular respecto a las enfermedades mentales, que fueron investigadas a través de la mirada de la antropología y la psicología, y bajo el enfoque de la fenomenología, en Xocén, Yucatán. El objetivo es visibilizar el potencial que tiene el diálogo intercultural, decolonial, enriquecedor y complementario, que conjunta visiones diversas y hasta contrastantes, entre el personal de los servicios de salud y los pacientes y terapeutas de la localidad. Pretendemos contribuir con ello a la búsqueda de| una mejor atención a la salud del pueblo maya yucateco, que permita enfrentar los grandes retos en la comunidad, de una manera más justa, equitativa y colaborativa, lo cual puede ser extensivo a las comunidades mayas, e indígenas, en general, como parte de un país latinoamericano que aspira a soluciones más adecuadas a sus características pluriculturales.

This article aims to describe briefly but in detail some ethnographic information on how meteorological knowledge is organized from the Tének worldview. The information comes from empirical research over several months, between 2016 and 2018, with the Káwlómej specialists from the Mantetzulel community (San Luis Potosí); review of anthropological (potstructural) theory and mesoamerican ethnological literature. As a result, it is pointed out that this traditional knowledge, about the signs for the forecast of meteorological phenomena, is used mainly in agricultural and ritual activities. The prediction is based on the observation of natural phenomena such as the movements of the sun, clouds, lightning, winds, moon, some animals, as well as the sacred beings regents of water that the tének of Mantetzulel recognize. In this way, it has been possible to determine that, within the Tének worldview, Mámláb (god of Thunder) is the ideological resource that allows them to order and give meaning to the natural phenomena that occur in their environment, being part of their same dual nature. Systematizing the weather in “dry” and “rainy” periods.

Durante el mes de diciembre de 2022 los medios de comunicación en Méxicodifundieron una noticia sobre un caso de plagio académico ocurrido en la UniversidadNacional de México (UNAM). El hecho llamó la atención pública demanera inmediata porque la persona involucrada era una ministra de la SupremaCorte de Justicia de la Nación de México. El plagio había ocurrido en el año de1987 cuando siendo estudiante en la Licenciatura en Derecho, la actual ministrapresentó como propia una tesis de otro alumno que ya había sido dictaminada yaprobada el año anterior. En virtud de que los plagios académicos no caducancon el tiempo, en los medios de comunicación se acusó y se objetó el título yla habilitación legal de la ministra como jurista y su postulación para presidir laSuprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN).

Durante la pandemia, mi lente curioso, siempre observando, captó varios grafitis sobre los muros, con temas del Corona virus en diferentes partes de Mérida. Muestran el sufrimiento, la muerte y el gran esfuerzo que hicieron tanto el personal de salud como el ejército, para luchar, rescatar y sacarnos de ese hoyo de problemas. Algunos, lamentablemente con la entrega de su vida. Existen todavía, pero no en tan buen estado, porque los grafitis se deterioran rápido, expuestos, como están, al sol, a la lluvia y a la pintura comercial, -que no garantiza larga vida-, o son sobrepintados por los dueños de los muros. Pero aquí están, captados cuando aún tenían sus colores vivos y cumplían con su mensaje a la gente.

Reseña de el libro Comunicación audiovisual indígena originaria e imaginarios políticos en Bolivia de Gabriela Zamorano, publicado por El Colegio de Michoacán. 

The Pleistocene Pampean Megafauna (PPM) may be considered as the assemblage consisting mainly of large mammals (i.e., bodymass ≥ 45 kg) that inhabited what is currently considered the Pampean Region during the Pleistocene and became extinct near the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. This contribution addresses several conceptual issues that may guide future efforts in its reconstruction and to consider potential consequences of its extinction. First, we approach the concept of megafauna by urging its explicit definition and contextualization in every investigation as a means of avoiding conceptual ambiguity. Second, we call attention to the risks of succumbing too readily to the temptation of employing a simplistic approach that assumes that extinct taxa had virtually the same biological requirements as those of their extant counterparts. We claim that within the PPM the abundance of taxa distantly related to or markedly distinct morphologically from their living counterparts poses significant challenges for understanding their paleobiology. Paleobiological interpretations need not be rigidly phylogenetically restricted, and phylogenetically based interpretations require critical assessment before their application. Third, we consider the paleoecology of the PPM from a metabolic perspective: as it was clearly dominated by allegedly hypometabolic megaherbivores (xenarthrans), there is no clear counterpart among living faunas. Fourth, we call attention to the fact that the loss of the PPM may have left in its wake an enduring but little-recognized legacy on the functioning of the contemporary ecosystem of the Pampean Region. Extinction of the PPM opened an enormous ecological chasm in the herbivore guild during the Holocene that persisted for about 6000 years, until it was filled, at least in part, by herds of cattle introduced since the sixteenth century.

We present the structure of the non-volant small mammal assemblages for five paleontological sequences from the Holocene located in the Chubut river basin. With the obtained information, an environmental hypothesis is proposed for the last thousands of years in central Patagonia. Thirteen radiocarbon dates were made with conventional methods. Among the five sequences, 12.644 individuals (MNI) were counted. Altogether, at least 18 small mammal taxa were recorded. The study of the deposits allowed us to infer that from 5.5 ka to 4.0 ka the region was covered by Patagonian steppe environments. Starting at 4.0 ka, especially in the lower valley of the Chubut river, the influence of the Monte environments begins to be noticed, alternating cold and humid conditions with warmer and drier conditions like the current ones. The small mammals suggest the existence of two main trends during the last 5.0 ka. For most of the temporal segment, we documented maintenance of the taxonomic structure (quantitative and qualitative) with subtle changes in the abundances of some species. Towards the last 0.15 ka, a deeper modification of the assemblages becomes evident, marked both by local disappearances and by marked increases or decreases of some species. The available evidence identifies anthropic activities as the main responsible for these changes.

Since the last decade of the 20th century, following the worldwide trend towards the development of chronological schemes with a biostratigraphic basis, contributions by Eduardo Pedro Tonni, Alberto Luis Cione, and collaborators began on this subject in Argentina. They proposed a almost continuous biostratigraphic sequence since the Late Miocene to the Holocene in the eastern pampean region of Argentina. Nowadays, it constitutes the chronological scale of the continental late Cenozoic of South America. The refinement of the Pampean biostratigraphic sequence made possible 1-to establish the chronology of the arrival of North American mammals immigrants to the southernmost South America during the Great American Biotic Exchange; 2-to improve the understanding of the faunal dynamics and the interpretation of the paleobiogeographic changes linked to the climatic fluctuations of the late Cenozoic; and 3-allowed establishing correlations between the type sections of the pampean region with other regions of the continent. The 30 years of scientific research by Tonni and Cione are unquestionable, in collaboration with other specialists, in reviewing the concept of “South American Land Mammal Ages” and to return to the chronostratigraphic-geochronological classification with a biostratigraphic basis. In this context, we updated and synthetized thebiostratigraphic scheme, its mastofaunal composition, and the main climatic changes that occurred during the Quaternary in the pampean region, along with a brief synopsis of the career of E. P. Tonni and his contribution to paleontology of vertebrates.