Revista Pucara

The Bliss of Disobedience

Guillermo Gomezjurado Quezada — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay aims to offer a playful reading of some books and authors from Ecuadorian literature that are rarely read today, despite being considered classics. Thus, writers such as Gonzalo Zaldumbide, Remigio Crespo, and Manuel J. Calle are read, weaving together some digressions around certain fragments of their works.

Reflections in dialogue with Manvscrito de vna corónica inconclvsa (2025) by Raúl Vallejo Corral, memory seeker trapped within a collective forgetfulness both within and beyond Ecuador.”

Michael Handelsman — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The following reflections attempt to alter somewhat the traditional academic book review format; instead of writing about a text with an appropriate degree of distance or objectivity, I have chosen to combine an academic style with a personal letter written directly and intermittenly to Raúl Vallejo, author of Manvscrito de una corónica inconclvsa (2025), recipient of the 2024 Miguel Ríofrío National Book Award for the Short Novel. Hence, the reflections-in-dialogue that accompany Vallejo as he immerses himself in Ecuador’s national history and recovers a chorus of voices/testimonies heretofore lost in a collective state of forgetfulness or (un)memory. The hope is that the inclusion here of dialogue might help to highlight the corónica inconclvsa as a project permanently restorative and always attentive to the innumerable voices that still wait to be heard and recognized as protagonists and subjects of history.

Training in anthropological research in Mexico. The Palerm-Viqueira Paradigm at the University of Guadalajara

Maria Estela Guevara Zárraga — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This text presents an approach that considers anthropological research as a set of skills and knowledge that are cultivated through the university curriculum of anthropologists. It is important to understand how the training of undergraduate anthropologists responds to universities’ administrative and teaching conditions, but it is also influenced by disciplinary perspectives corresponding to the way in which the discipline itself has been cultivated in the local and national context. The objective of this essay is to recognize the influence that, what I have called the Palerm-Viqueira paradigm, has had on the training of anthropologists at the University of Guadalajara. This paradigm is embedded in a curriculum that offers adverse administrative conditions for its proper fulfillment, a form of mismatch between what one wants to achieve and what is available to do so. The methodology is documentary and systematizes the teaching experience of some participants in the program. The main results are the recognition of this mismatch between the model and its context, in addition to the particularities that the program offers and makes it viable in terms of disciplinary training.

Landscape, occupation and memory: an archaeological approach to Cerro de Monjas (Cuenca, Ecuador)

Jorge Fernando Ortiz Naranjo — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract:

Archaeological survey is a fundamental tool for the identification and study of cultural heritage. In this context, the present work focuses on an intensive field survey carried out at the Cerro de Monjas site, located in the Turi parish of Cuenca, Ecuador. The main objective was to analyze the human settlements that have developed in this area since pre-Columbian times, through systematic observation and documentation of surface archaeological evidence. This study represents a first formal approach to the site, thereby enabling the recognition of its archaeological potential and laying the groundwork for future research. The data obtained not only confirm the existence of ancient occupations, but also highlight the importance of protecting and valuing this area within the region’s cultural heritage context.

Keywords: Archaeology, survey, Cerro de Monjas, archaeological materials.

FEMSA’s role in the production of urban space through the Monterrey Soccer Club

Jonathan Montero Oropeza, Juan Antonio Rodríguez González — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Supported by the concept of space derived from critical geography, the objective of this text is to interpret how, through its ownership of the Rayados de Monterrey football team, the corporation Fomento Empresarial Mexicano, Sociedad Anónima (FEMSA) configured a project in professional soccer as an element to diversify its businesses, influence the urban configuration of the Monterrey metropolitan area through the construction of a soccer stadium, and position the capital of Nuevo León. The study was based on fieldwork conducted in May 2023 in Monterrey, as well as on the consultation of newspaper and bibliographic sources. It concludes that it is essential to analyze how, through professional soccer, various companies form alliances with public actors that lead to the transformation of urban space and the positioning of a city from a business perspective.

Affective cosmopolitcs: An approach to the political thought of Ailton Krenak

Diego Mellado Gómez, Valentina Bulo — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

During the last decades, Latin American indigenous thought has gained relevance in different aspects, especially by questioning questioning society’s structural colonialism and raising critical readings in the face of the current climate crisis. In this context, the reflections of philosopher Ailton Krenak have stood out as an expression that condenses the diversity of Amerindian worlds, especially in Brazil. In this article, we investigate a key concept of his thought: affective alliances, an idea focused on radical alterity that redefines the political from a relational perspective, including bonds beyond the human. To approach the study of affective alliances, we propose a journey through three moments: the first is related to Ailton Krenak’s political trajectory from the end of the dictatorship to the Brazilian redemocratization process; from that experience, we review the turning point that led led to questioning alliances; finally, we explore the meanings of affectivity in its cosmopolitical dimension. To develop this essay, we have used interviews, writings, and other documents of Krenak from 1980 to date, through which we concatenate the history of the peoples of the forest, their reflections, and the Afro-indigenous meeting points.

The Discursive Construction of Transgressive Women in Quito (1920–1929)

Fernando Guerrero Maruri — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article analyzes the criminalization of women in the city of Quito during the 1920s, based on a study of the social discourse reproduced in the printed press. It assumes that representations of female criminality not only reflect social realities but also construct normative frameworks regarding femininity and deviance. The research adopts a historical-discursive approach, using as its corpus the newspapers El Comercio, El Día, and El Derecho, which were widely circulated during the period. Through qualitative discourse analysis, the study examines how the figure of the transgressive woman was constructed through moral, scientific, and legal lenses, and how these representations reinforced a social order rooted in motherhood, obedience, and domesticity. The article also identifies tensions and fractures within the hegemonic discourse, highlighting the complex interplay between gender, power, and criminality in early twentieth-century urban Quito.

The wolf as a symbol of freedom in the poem “Los motivos del lobo,” by Rubén Darío

Pablo Esteban Vald´és Flores — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The project explores the symbolic configuration of the wolf in the wolf motifs by Rubén Darío, traditionally associated in Western literature with violence and evil. In contrast to this negative representation, Darius reworks the wolf as a symbol of freedom, strength and passion. the research part of the episode collected in I fioretti di san francesco, where Saint Francis of Assisi meets the wolf of gubbio, medieval hagiographic text that the modernist poet transforms into a lyrical composition of deep philosophical sense. the objective of the study is to identify the stylistic and rhetorical resources that make this symbolic resignification possible in contrast with human cruelty. the methodology is based on a textual comparative analysis between the original narrative version and its poetic reinterpretation. it is concluded that Darío gives the character an unprecedented complexity, challenging its traditional load and offering an implicit critique of the dominant values of modernity.

Storytelling and Don Quixote de la Mancha: A precursor model of contemporary persuasive narratives

angel martinez de lara — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article develops a brief study on the points of convergence between contemporary storytelling and Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It argues that Cervantes’s novel anticipates, with remarkable formal and ethical density, principles that are now central to strategic communication: the construction of the hero, emotional appeal (pathos), polyphony and the management of narrative reliability, metanarration, and the transmedia expansion of the diegetic universe. We have applied a hermeneutic-comparative methodology, which includes, among other aspects, narratology (Genette, Booth, and Bal) and narrative theory (Ricoeur and Bakhtin). Selected passages of Don Quixote are analyzed in relation to current strategies of applied storytelling (Salmon, Denning, and Jenkins). The observations suggest the need for further, more extensive studies, as well as the idea that Cervantes’s text constitutes an original laboratory of persuasive techniques that would later be framed within texts from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Sounds of rebellion: THe musical symbol as a tool of agitation and historical memory in ecuador

Esteban Siguencia Avila — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This project explores the role of music as a tool of social unrest, analyzing how its diverse expressions have functioned as a catalyst for individual and collective consciousness. To this end, the research question is formulated: How does music transform individual protest into a collective phenomenon? Through qualitative methodology and a historical analysis of specific cases, this work seeks to answer the question posed. The project concludes that music not only reflects but also shapes social struggle and cultural identity, revealing the emotions, values, and perseverance of movements. Finally, the text argues that music serves as a reminder that the voice of resistance cannot be silenced, but rather persists and resonates in the memories of those who hear it, thus perpetuating the legacy of social struggle.

Language and Freedom in the University of the 21st Century

Manuel Villavicencio-Quinde — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000