BY SUSANNA SHARPE There is a term in the Nahuatl language that means learned person, sage, or knowledge keeper: itxtlamati (plural, ixtlamatinih), a compound of the words meaning face and to know. The concept of knowledge gleaned from experience is central in the work of Kelly S. McDonough, … [Read more...]
Four Centuries of Rare Documents Will Be Digitized in Partnership with Puebla Archive
BY SUSANNA SHARPE August 8, 2018, was an auspicious day for students of Mexican history. An agreement signed between LLILAS Benson and the Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Estado de Puebla marks the official start of a project to digitize a large collection of archival materials from the Fondo … [Read more...]
21 años de paz, 21 millones de documentos: Una reflexión sobre el portal digital del Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala
POR HANNAH ALPERT-ABRAMS | traducido por Susanna Sharpe ¿Cómo le hacemos para entender 80 millones de páginas de documentos históricos? Esta pregunta es de naturaleza filosófica. Se trata del poder de la mente para asimilar un número tan grande de documentos. El Archivo Histórico de la … [Read more...]
From the Director
This is my first opportunity to greet you from the pages of Portal as the director of LLILAS Benson. I came into this position with many years of connections to LLILAS and the Benson Collection. I started teaching at The University of Texas at Austin in 1990, when I had an appointment at … [Read more...]
Making Beauty: The Wearing of Polleras in the Andean Altiplano
BY ANGELA TAPIA ARCE Lucy does not smile too often. Like other women who wear polleras, she does not greet you with a wide grin, unless you are more than an acquaintance. Yet, when Lucy smiles the stars twinkle, whether or not the sun is overhead. She has two little silver stars inlaid into her … [Read more...]
Mexico in Times of Violence and Impunity: Legal and Forensic Anthropology in Support of Human Rights
BY AÍDA HERNÁNDEZ CASTILLO Leer en español Mexico is engulfed in a human rights crisis. The current atmosphere of violence and impunity implies new challenges for social anthropology and, more specifically, legal anthropology. Long-term fieldwork in regions affected by violence involves … [Read more...]
Rethinking Maya Studies: A Conversation with Ruud van Akkeren
BY SUSANNA SHARPE It is hard not to feel moved when talking to Ruud van Akkeren about his research. In such a conversation, it quickly becomes clear that Van Akkeren has his own nuanced, and possibly revolutionary, way of understanding Maya past and present in Guatemala, and that he doesn’t … [Read more...]
Struggles and Obstacles in Indigenous Women’s Fight for Justice in Guatemala
BY IRMA ALICIA VELÁSQUEZ NIMATUJ Transitional justice refers to measures both judicial and non-judicial that are intended to redress large-scale human rights abuses. In this article, I focus on two recent cases of transitional justice in Guatemala. The first is the 2013 trial against General and … [Read more...]
LLILAS Benson and the Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Patrimony of Mexico
BY KELLY McDONOUGH One of the main attractions among the rare books and manuscripts at the Benson Latin American Collection is a group of late-sixteenth-century manuscripts and maps known as the Relaciones Geográficas (or RGs for short). As described in the Benson’s web portal to the RGs, these … [Read more...]
Masculinity and Gender in Kaqchikel Sololá, Guatemala
BY RIGOBERTO AJCALÓN CHOY “The law is giving many freedoms to women,” notes an interviewee with some dismay when I ask him about the current status of indigenous women in the rural Guatemalan town of Kaqchikel Sololá. This response exemplifies men’s reactions to the slow but steady pace at which … [Read more...]
