According to its 2022 national glacier inventory, Chile is home to 26,169 glaciers and roughly 80 percent of the glaciers in South America. Yet much of this ice is not legally protected. Diverse local communities whose lifeworlds depend on the spiritual and material integrity of Andean glaciers and their meltwaters are placing growing demands on Chilean glaciologists to accompany grassroots campaigns to defend these ecosystems from the direct impacts of anthropogenic interventions amid the climate crisis and years of megadrought. This article builds off a feminist glaciology framework to examine if, how, and to what extent an emerging generation of Andean glacier scientists is learning to question the masculinist and Western modes of knowledge, thinking, and action embedded in their disciplinary training. Through ethnographic fieldwork with glacier scientists, arrieros (herders), and grassroots organizations in the municipality of Putaendo in Central Chile, and the author’s participation in codesigning a knowledge exchange between Mapuche communities and glacier scientists in the province of Araucanía, this article analyzes the possibility for dialogues between ancestral, local, and technoscientific knowledges to transform the dominant discourses and practices of glaciology. It demonstrates the ontological openings that occur when knowledges that have been systematically marginalized from the technoscientific domain of glacier science are taken seriously in conversations over the present and future of the cryosphere. And it argues that these ontological exchanges not only impact the possibility of climate justice for those communities most directly affected by glacier loss but also can contribute to building more feminist, plural, and decolonial praxis within contemporary glaciology.

While global history’s emphasis on networks and its de-emphasis on the nation has brought about a fruitful platform for exploring interregional connections, this article argues that a global history recentered in the periphery and willing to draw from its rich national historiographies has the potential to reveal new forms of globalization and connection. It takes Argentina as an exemplary case to consider the ways in which tracing one nation’s many transnational and global orientations might bring to light motivations, geographical dimensions, and fields of power previously unseen.

This article analyzes structures of feeling among the generation of trauma carriers who grew up under Pinochet’s dictatorship. Drawing on interviews with thirty-seven cultural producers (including filmmakers, novelists, visual artists, and memory activists), we shed light on the generational memory work involved in processing cultural trauma, emphasizing the emotional force behind memory transmission in postconflict societies dealing with legacies of terror. Drawing on Raymond Williams’s notion of structures of feeling, we explore how the generational memory of children during Pinochet’s dictatorship is shaped by melancholic intergenerational identification with past struggles. This intergenerational bond is characterized by melancholic affect in representing the previous generation, which is rooted in experiences of state violence and resistance and plays a key role in processing historical trauma and shaping contemporary social critique in postconflict Chile.

This article explores the workings of social and territorial stigma among residents of an stigmatized neighborhood in Santiago de Chile in the context of nationwide conflict. By attending to the narratives of social organizers, it shows how stigma framed the narratives of the Chilean revolt of October 2019 produced by two female organizers older than fifty years without tertiary education. It argues that, for those with less educational and political resources, stigma can help think through a social conflict by translating broader political issues into everyday life experiences and can both constrain and enable different forms of engagement in the revolt. The narratives were obtained by ethnographic interviews carried out in a broader project of the unfolding of the unrest in Santiago’s peripheries between November 2019 and July 2020.

El presente artículo aborda los alcances y limitaciones del reconocimiento obtenido por el Pueblo Tribal Afrodescendiente Chileno en el proceso constituyente iniciado en Chile luego de la revuelta social de 2019 y, particularmente, en las deliberaciones de la Convención Constitucional que sesionó entre 2021 y 2022. Además de analizar la presentación y votación de normas relacionadas con el Pueblo Tribal Afrodescendiente, el principal foco está puesto en los discursos de los/as convencionales constituyentes relacionados con dichas normas. Mediante un análisis crítico del discurso, se identifican tres ejes discursivos que enmarcaron el apoyo o rechazo de iniciativas en torno al reconocimiento afrodescendiente, vinculados al significado de la categoría jurídica de “pueblo tribal”, a la cuestión de la preexistencia y a la extranjerización. El artículo concluye con una discusión de las posturas adoptadas por diferentes sectores de la Convención, identificando algunos imaginarios que comportaron límites para la inclusión del pueblo afrochileno en la propuesta constitucional.

La Revista de la Universidad Técnica del Estado (1969–1973) fue una publicación periódica de carácter académico que tuvo como objetivo difundir el proceso de transformación de esta casa de estudios gracias al movimiento de la Reforma Universitaria. Estuvo inmersa en la transición política del régimen demócrata cristiano de Eduardo Frei Montalva al programa de gobierno de carácter socialista de Salvador Allende. Su producción editorial e impresión estuvo a cargo de la Editorial UTE y el Taller Gráfico UTE respectivamente, áreas de trabajo relacionadas a la labor de extensión de la universidad. Este artículo pretende establecer un diálogo entre esta publicación y su contexto político-educativo, por medio de la revisión de su variedad temática, autoral y formatos de escritura. Finalmente, se busca visibilizar las dinámicas y experiencias del trabajo de diseño de la revista, a través del análisis de su producción visual (portadas y portadillas gráficas) y el rescate testimonial de integrantes del grupo de diseñadores responsables de cada ejemplar, información inédita hasta el momento.

Elections in many contemporary Latin American democracies unfold in a setting that complicates traditional political communication strategies. Indeed, many countries in the region are characterized by weak political parties, high levels of institutional distrust, and growing disdain for political elites. While a large body of literature has sought to explain which factors weaken parties and increase institutional distrust, less attention has been paid to the question of how these characteristics shape political communication. Drawing on the content of television advertisements created for Chile’s constitutional plebiscite campaigns, and original interviews with the creative and political teams that designed the ads, we explore how each side communicated with voters; the issues they focused on; and to what extent they relied on partisan, policy, generic, or emotional appeals. The analysis identifies important changes in messaging across the three electoral contests and probes an explanation for this variation. We find that in the absence of partisan messages, the constitutional campaigns relied first on policy-based appeals but then transitioned to generic appeals, ultimately opting for “antipolitics” messaging. These changes resulted from the expansion of the electorate and growing distrust in the constitutional convention. The analysis also underscores that pro–status quo plebiscite campaigns are more likely to deploy negative emotional language than campaigns centered on change.

El siguiente artículo propone una revisión de los presupuestos temáticos y estructurales utilizados en las novelas de Lina Meruane Las infantas (1998) y Fruta podrida (2007), desde una perspectiva socioliteraria basada en algunas ideas desarrolladas por Slavoj Žižek en sus distintos análisis sobre la violencia, la ideología y el poder. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es descubrir si, a modo de actualización, Fruta podrida supone una reformulación de las premisas antisistema que movilizan a los personajes en torno a puntos centrales en ambas novelas como las corporalidades, la marginalidad o el exceso escatológico, entre otros.

El proceso de retorno del exilio, iniciado después de la caída del poder de Juan Manuel de Rosas en la Confederación Argentina, llevó a una compleja trama de reinserción profesional. Este artículo examina la incorporación de los proscriptos en los cargos asociados a la formación de las instituciones políticas argentinas. Para ello, recurrimos a una base de datos de 891 casos que utilizamos para seguir los recorridos socioprofesionales antes, durante y después de la emigración. En los principales sitios de asilo en Bolivia, Chile y Uruguay, los emigrados integraron las ocupaciones asociadas a la construcción institucional: desde cargos públicos, en el ejército y hasta profesiones liberales como la abogacía y el periodismo. Postulamos el exilio como experiencia fundadora que permitió la adquisición del saber gubernamental necesario para el desarrollo de las instituciones políticas argentinas en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Nuestro estudio es un ejemplo de cómo los fenómenos transnacionales jugaron un papel determinante en la formación de los Estados nación contemporáneos.

Chile has undergone two consecutive failed attempts at constitutional replacement (2021–2022 and 2023), positioning it as a globally interesting case. While existing literature identifies macropolitical and institutional factors underlying such failures, certain key causal mechanisms remain unexplored. This article addresses the central question of why majority-controlling political actors, aware of the need for broad national consensus, ultimately fail to achieve it. Framed as a two-level process—one at the elite negotiation level and the other at the electoral ratification level—this study elucidates the mechanisms operating at each stage that contributed to this dual failure. By analyzing these dynamics in detail, the article offers valuable lessons for future efforts to replace a constitution in a democratic setting.

In March 2015, a group of feminist writers and academics in Argentina organized a marathon reading event to protest femicide, using the slogan “Ni Una Menos.” Less than three months later, more than 250,000 Argentines participated in the first #NiUnaMenos demonstration in Buenos Aires. Since then, #NiUnaMenos has transformed into a transnational feminist movement and has shifted the conversation about gender violence in digital and physical spaces. Drawing from critical discourse analysis and feminist theory, this article examines the discursive strategies employed by #NiUnaMenos. It analyzes key texts from the months leading up to the first demonstration and argues that these texts were strategically constructed as “sites of struggle” in order to reach diverse groups. The analysis reveals four discursive dichotomies in which the movement’s discourse oscillates between seemingly opposing ideas and channels. This discursive oscillation allowed #NiUnaMenos to reach the masses and, in turn, spark a cultural shift toward gender equality.

This research note outlines the current state of preservation and accessibility of an audiovisual document that contains complete video footage of the Trial of the Argentine Military Junta, whose verdict in 1985 found the accused guilty of crimes against humanity perpetrated during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983).The project of digitization is the result of a joint effort by the University of Salamanca, the Argentine human rights organization Memoria Abierta, and the judges involved in the case, with the support of the Argentine Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal. Its two main objectives are to preserve and provide open access to the audiovisual document. To date only digitized preservation has been attained, a nonetheless remarkable achievement. Despite legislation dates enforcing the protection of the parties involved in the trial, and the absence of legal constraints, open access to the document has not been obtained.

Since General Augusto Pinochet’s detention in 1998, an unprecedented number of human rights trials has taken place across Latin America. The main source of evidence employed in these proceedings are victims’ testimonies: in fact,records documenting human rights violations are generally unavailable, having either been destroyed or hidden. When archives do exist, they do not usually identify individual perpetrators or victims, nor do they directly establish criminal responsibility. This article focuses on two criminal trials that unfolded in Argentina and Italy and closely probed the atrocities of Operation Condor. It contends that archival documents only contain remnants of truth and fragments of evidence. These slivers have to be interpreted, contextualized, and sometimes even questioned in order to render them relevant and useful to criminal investigations of past atrocities. Specifically, the article deconstructs the role that different trial actors—including public and private prosecutors, archivists, experts, witnesses, lawyers, and judges—played in the courtroom, engaging in proactive efforts to piece together the evidence that archival records possess and activating their content.

En Chile, desde los inicios de la república, las amnistías después de guerras civiles y conflictos violentos fueron el fundamento de la reconciliación política. La transición política iniciada en 1990 se propuso establecer la verdad sobre las violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas durante la dictadura, reconocer y reparar a las víctimas y hacer justicia en la medida de lo posible, a pesar de la vigencia de la amnistía de 1978. En este artículo se analiza la evolución de diversas instancias del proceso de justicia transicional y la lucha contra la impunidad que es la experiencia de las víctimas de la tortura y sus familias. El caso de Haydee Oberreuter nos permite examinar las posibilidades, resultados y limitaciones de los procesos judiciales en relación con las demandas de justicia y reparación de las víctimas de tortura.

Desde formas y latitudes distintas, existen llamamientos a la globalización de la educación superior. Pero, ¿qué es lo que realmente se pide? Este artículo examina los programas de enseñanza de teoría y crítica literaria de Argentina, un país históricamente atravesado por el pensamiento europeo, con una sólida producción académica. Encontramos que los programas priorizan la producción nacional y una selección de obras internacionales, con inclinación hacia el pensamiento francés. Estos resultados se explican por la ecología institucional y la distribución intelectual del trabajo entre las instituciones más antiguas y prestigiosas que se centran en el ámbito nacional y las más recientes, con mayor inclinación internacional. También se explican por el peso de la traducción, que permite mayor acceso a materiales. Además, encontramos bibliografía realizada por fuera de América Latina, Europa y Estados Unidos, de académicos globalizados que dejaron sus países de origen para estudiar en Europa y Estados Unidos.

Este artículo explora el concepto de “utopías realistas” del químico argentino Oscar Varsavsky. Mientras la mayoría de las interpretaciones del trabajo de Varsavsky recuperan sus aportaciones a los estudios de ciencia y tecnología en América Latina, aquí se argumenta que su idea de “estilo científico” forma parte de un marco teórico más amplio. De este modo, la discusión se enfoca en el uso que el autor dio a las ciencias nuevas y al enfoque de sistemas para adaptarlos al proyecto liberador de las utopías realizables. Inicialmente se problematiza el eclecticismo teórico de Varsavsky y su redefinición ideológica ante el fenómeno intelectual argentino de los años sesenta y setenta; después se discute su idea de utopías realizables e ingeniería utópica articulada a la noción de poder y cambio social; finalmente, se exponen los conceptos de racionalidad pueblocéntrica y estilos sociales.

This study assesses the environmental damage caused by copper mining on surface water bodies in Chile. The few official records on the discharges and concentrations of arsenic and copper only allow for identifying the impacts of some mining operations in the regions of Coquimbo, Valparaíso, and O’Higgins. The economic valuation is carried out through the impact pathway approach, which relates copper production, discharges, concentrations, and dose-response coefficients to establish effects on health and agriculture. The results show that the economic damage due to water pollution occurs mainly in the regions of Coquimbo and O’Higgins. The above is explained because the greatest externalities are generated in agricultural areas, while the damage to health is low because of the small population exposed (97.6% versus 2.4%). Finally, total damages represent 0.43%, 0.26%, and 0.0001% of copper sales in the mining operations analyzed in the regions of Coquimbo, O’Higgins, and Valparaíso, respectively.

Este trabalho analisa comparativamente alguns aspectos convergentes da obra do pensador alemão Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) e do escritor uruguaio Eduardo Galeano (1940–2015). Apresentam-se, assim, certas afinidades entre os dois autores no que diz respeito à proposição de uma crítica à história oficial, tal como concebida a partir das classes dominantes, em prol da recuperação da memória de grupos sociais submetidos à violência e à opressão. Destacam-se, ainda, correspondências metodológicas acerca do emprego de analogias e metáforas por ambos os autores.

This article explores how Francisco de Aguirre used the Copiapó Valley encomienda to negotiate political power during the transition from conquest to colonial rule in northern Chile. Simultaneously, we analyze the circumstances of how a native society was incorporated into the Spanish Empire after a decade of fighting and resistance on the fringes of the empire. The strategic use of the fear of native rebellions to close the road from Peru to Chile gave Aguirre enough power to negotiate an important political position, which in the future would clash with the colonial authorities. Copiapó Valley’s peripheral location in the southernmost Atacama Desert constituted a political gray zone for the colonial administration. This space contributed to consolidating power for Aguirre and enabled locals some negotiation power within the possibilities afforded by the colonial system.