Cuadernos Inter.c.a.mbio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe
Cuadernos Inter.c.a.mbio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe belongs to the Centro de Investigación en Identidad y Cultura Latinoamericanas (Research Center on Latin American Identity and Culture) of the University of Costa Rica, and aims to disseminate scientific production and academic reflection on topics related to identities and cultures in Central America and the Caribbean, while taking into account that the region is part of a larger group of Ibero-America and other cultural areas. Our purpose is to serve as a means to disseminate knowledge on cultural and social issues and facilitate academic exchange among researchers from universities around the world, researching processes associated with such issues. Considering our focus of interest, Cuadernos Inter.c.a.mbio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe is marked by interdisciplinarity, hence our journal receives contributions from different Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts. With a view to promoting a broad discussion, the journal contains articles of a scientific nature, but also incorporates the reflection on applied experiences in the field of cultures and identities. Our target audience is the academia and citizenship in general. As an arbitrated academic journal, Cuadernos Inter.c.a.mbio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe puts the articles received through a rigorous double-blind peer review, in which participates a high qualified body of international specialists. The format of its publication is digital and its periodicity is biannual. The first number comprises from January to June; the second, from July to December. OAI-PMH URL: https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/intercambio/oai *This journal does not charge for publishing and processing received articles (APC). We are indexed in (see complete list in the block "We are indexed in"): <a href="https://doaj.org/toc/1659-4940?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22filtered%22%3A%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22terms%22%3A%7B%22index.issn.exact%22%3A%5B%221659-0139%22%2C%221659-4940%22%5D%7D%7D%2C%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22_type%22%3A%22article%22%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%2C%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7D%2C%22size%22%3A100%2C%22_source%22%3A%7B%7D%7D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
Los autores/as que publiquen en esta revista aceptan las siguientes condiciones: Los autores/as conservan los derechos de autor y ceden a la revista el derecho de la primera publicación, con el trabajo registrado bajo la licencia de atribución de Creative Commons, que permite a terceros utilizar lo publicado siempre que mencionen la autoría del trabajo y a la primera publicación en esta revista. Los autores/as pueden realizar otros acuerdos contractuales independientes y adicionales para la distribución no exclusiva de la versión del artículo publicado en esta revista (p. ej., incluirlo en un repositorio institucional o publicarlo en un libro) siempre que indiquen claramente que el trabajo se publicó por primera vez en esta revista.
The Role of National Councils on Older Adults in Rethinking the Public Institutionality Framework for Human Aging in Latin America
The study presents a theoretical and conceptual review of the regional framework on population aging in Latin America, emphasizing the role of National Councils on Older Adults as governing bodies in this field. It examines their current strengths and challenges, highlighting their importance as key public institutions in the design and implementation of policies related to aging and older adults. Using case studies from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, the analysis explores practical experiences that offer valuable lessons for strengthening these entities. This review contributes to updating knowledge about public institutions focused on the stewardship of population aging in the region.
[.artículos científicos.] (sección arbitrada)
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/cr/deed.es
Presentation of issue I-2024. Displacements
Presentation of issue II-2024. Wind, Memory and Words
Cámara de Gesell, de Carolina Quintero: o sobre la vocación de defender la vida de su naturaleza huidiza
[.exchanges and memories.] (non peer reviewed)
Copyright (c) 2025 Alejandra Solórzano Castillo (Autor/a) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/cr/deed.es
Sexile as a Narrative Motif in Three Stories from Mundo cruel (2010), by Luis Negrón
One of the trends in contemporary Latin American literature seeks, among other purposes, to make visible the subjects and bodies that the official discourse relegated to the condition of the other. In this context, the Puerto Rican case is fundamental, because recent textual practices seek to function not only as an aesthetic object, but also as a political act reclaiming that otherness. An example of this is the queer theme, which has gradually appropriated the Puerto Rican narrative to make dissident sexualities visible from the perspective of different characters. This article analyzes sexile as a narrative motif in the discursive construction of homophobia in the stories “Junito”, “Muchos o de cómo a veces la lengua es bruja” and “Mundo cruel”, published in Mundo cruel (2010), by Luis Negrón. It is concluded that the United States represents an ideal space to experience sexuality or a place far from the national territory, where those, the inverted, should go. In Puerto Rico, migration is, therefore, necessary: ​​for some, because it allows the experience of sexuality in freedom; for others, because it maintains the status quo of the nation.
The era of Migratory Entrapment: African Migration towards Mexico's Northern Border
In his classic book "Beyond the Line" (1994), Durand identifies six eras or stages in the history of Mexico/US migration, showing that in 130 years of migratory history there have been both continuities and important ruptures. In this article we argue that, due to the transformations that have occurred in the Mexican migration scenario, we find ourselves in a new stage, which we could call "the era of entrapment". In the following pages, we begin by discussing the concept of "migratory entrapment"; in the second section we point out the key processes and moments in the shaping of the era of entrapment; the third section illustrates the dynamics of entrapment based on the case of the population originating in Africa. Finally, we conclude by arguing that migratory entrapment, as observed at Mexico's northern border, is only a local expression of a global phenomenon.
Número temático (artículos científicos) (sección arbitrada)
Global Scenarios, Hypotheses and Trends of African Migration Flows in Central America (2010-2022)
The following article analyzes the characteristics and trends of the African migratory flows that transit Central America, problematizing the consensual hypotheses of their origin in Latin America, their mobilities and transits, systematizing and comparing a series of statistical data of their transit through the Darien Region, a description of their mobility patterns and the problematization of the hypotheses in the face of these data. The conclusion of this study refers to a transformation of regional migratory regimes and of the Central American migratory corridor, with the redefinition of its geographical scope, the involvement of global migratory trends and systems, and transformations in migratory policy, framed in growing and diversifying African migratory flows.
A Contemporary Reading of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Presidential Elections of 2018 in Costa Rica
The article addresses the potential of Greek Tragedy to be used to approach social issues, specifically the political and religious crisis that Costa Rican society is going through and that reaches a climax during the 2018 presidential elections. The main objective is to have a socio-historical interpretation of Sophocles´ Oedipus Rex in order to show how the play could provide keys to understanding a society in transition that experienced social polarization and political confrontation marked by complex experiences of rupture of the social bond. To address this purpose, we complement the interpretation of the tragedy with a follow up of some Latin American and classical adaptations that follow the trail of the myth. And based on sources of the time and specialized bibliography, we approach the social context of the crisis of legitimacy that Costa Rican democracy faces linked to the rise of religious fundamentalism and the neoliberal worldview of the market.
Migration in the Central America of the Past. Reino of Guatemala, end of the Colonial Era
Mobility is a phenomenon inherent in human history. Central America is experiencing one of the most acute migratory crises, yet studies on spatial and social mobility in its colonial past are scarce. This article is part of an ongoing research that aims to contribute to overcoming this reality. Using information obtained mainly from parish registers, the study focuses on five regions of the Reino of Guatemala between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in order to reveal the migratory phenomenon inserted in the intense social and geographical mobility that characterized the region at that time. The results show that social and geographic mobility are key factors in Central American history and indispensable for understanding its social reality.
Bruno Reis. (2020). Modernização, Mercado e Democracia. Política e Economia em Sociedades Complexas. Porto Alegre: UFRGS Editora. [pp. 440]
The Confirmation of Democracy. The Quality of Politics
The article affirms the guiding idea of the validity of democracy. Understood as a form of government with universal pretensions, it is besieged. The eclipsing of democracy corresponds to the weakening of the West and the new emerging economic poles in the East. The conceptual discussion and the current historical process are traced to the point of locating the limits of democracy before Liberal democracy, in particular, is in danger. Given this, there is a reaffirmation of the importance of the democratic project, due to its civilizational relevance. The work explores the difficulties of its external implementation and the need for its internal consolidation, in addition, it makes a review of the importance of the legal and republican culture. Finally, the issue of quantity and quality in politics is addressed. Democracy is confirmed as the most viable political relationship for civilized coexistence.
Inhabited Body and Other Poems by Marta Leonor González
[.Suwa': producción creativa.] (sección no arbitrada)
Feminisms in the University. Mapping Interruptions from/at the Faculty of Social Sciences/UNC
This paper presents the results of a diagnostic research on the implementation of the Feminist Institutional Policy (PIF) developed within the framework of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the National University of Cordoba, Argentina. With the aim of understanding the state of affairs, a rigorous documentary review and the analysis of sixteen semi-structured interviews with key informants were carried out. This article organizes the findings around the state of implementation and dynamics of PIF in three dimensions: what has been written, what has been said and what has been done on the issue in question. In each of these dimensions, the results of documentary mapping and narrative analysis are brought together. Finally, three considerations derived from the research are highlighted: the polysemy surrounding feminist institutional politics, the ruptures generated by the assumption of such a commitment in the institutional dynamics, and the daily rehearsal as an ethic of feminist action.
[.página abierta.] (artículos científicos) (sección arbitrada)
Memorandum response to the article “ENsaYO´s: invEStigar en ARTE”
Serapio, Miguel, Francisco, Enrique y Manuel: Religious Sculptures of Ramos Family
This paper systematizes biographical information of three generations of the Ramos family, Costarican religious sculptors from Cartago and Heredia. In addition, it shows artistic pieces produced in their workshops: initiating with sculptures with signature, and then following with a set of pieces attributed to them, due to their formal characteristics. Methodologically, two lines of inquiry are followed, one of a documentary genealogical nature and another descriptive and analytical of the art pieces registered in the database of the Inventory of Sacred Art and other objects destined for the cult of Curia Metropolitana de San José. At the end of this study, a list of pieces uncertain to attribute is drawn up, which are pointed out to serve as a starting point for future research on this subject.
Imaginaries of Capitalist Destruction in Tikal Futura. Memorias para un futuro incierto (novelita futurista), by Franz Galich
This article analyzes the novel Tikal Futura. Memorias para un futuro incierto (novelita futurista) (2011), by the Guatemalan author Franz Galich (1951-2007). From an interdisciplinary approach and a Marxist critique of political economy, using Marx´s concept of “metabolic rift,” I argue that Galich's dystopia can be read as a symbolic and critical response to capitalist rationality that conceives of nature as an unlimited source of exchange values. The novel questions neoliberal rationality in which human and non-human nature are seen from the logic of costs and benefits mediating our relationship with the world through the commodity form. Finally, I argue that the novel allows us to read the current environmental crisis through the concept of Capitalocene.
Jorge Urrutia. (2021). El espejo empañado. Sobre el realismo y el testimonio (Desde la literatura hispanoamericana). Madrid: Cátedra. [pp. 379]
Mobility while Waiting. Survival, Decisions, and Emotions of Migrants at Mexican Border Cities
The article aims to analyze waiting periods during the mobility of people intending to migrate to the United States of America. It primarily focuses on the moment when people have to make a stop on their journey and wait in four Mexican cities: two at the southern border and two at its northern border. Based on qualitative research using different methods covering a broad period of fieldwork, and interweaving the literature on mobility and waiting, our intention is to demonstrate how migrants live, as well as manage and signify waiting periods during their stay in these cities. In addition, we wish to highlight how the waiting moment is a mechanism to stop mobility towards the United States through an array of strategies devised by the Mexican state. However, migrating people continue the movement, making decisions and surviving while waiting. That is, far from inducing paralysis and withdrawal, waiting moments shape mobility trajectories through emotions, decisions, knowledge and survival strategies in the "provisional waiting cities.”
From COVID-19. New and Old Orders in Migration in Tijuana, Northern Border of Mexico
This article presents a detailed review of what happened as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic on the northern border of Mexico, particularly in the city of Tijuana. The objective is to explain the fundamental changes in the forms of migratory control and the responses designed by organizations and migrants. The work is based on the application, during 2022, of in-depth interviews with activists and migrant defenders as well as with migrants. The results show that, with the pandemic, the relationships between civil society organizations, international agencies and state actors have changed. In this sense, migration control became more efficient and rational, as well as more inhumane and cruel. At the same time, the results reveal that it was the organizations that provided the main responses and forms of accompaniment.
Haiti in the Americas. Breaking Points in Migration Policies and Haitian Mobilities in the Continent (2010-2023)
In this paper, I analyze the regional panorama that has favored the deployment of new Haitian mobilities in the Americas from 2010 to 2023, with the implementation of the new mobile application (the CBP One) developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and which must be used by asylum seekers to obtain a place in line at the southern border or in certain specific countries. The first part focuses on the internal factors in Haiti that pushed thousands of people to try their luck in Latin America. The second part focuses on the factors that attracted Haitian emigration to Latin America in the second decade of the 21st century, such as migration policies and economic dynamics of certain South American countries. The third part questions the breaking points in migration policies that favored a new Haitian exodus to the United States. This contribution proposes a portrait of different migration policies of the last thirteen years in the continent, analyzed through the prism of Haitian migration. This paper is based on ethnographic observations and interviews conducted with Haitian migrants in several Mexican border cities (Tijuana, Mexicali, Tapachula) and in Mexico City; it also uses personal communications in shelters and by phone with Haitians in different places on their way to the United States. These observations, interviews and personal communications were carried out between 2019 and 2023.
Breaking Paradigms: a Multisite Perspective of the Migratory Phenomenon in Mexico and Central America, 2010-2022
The migratory phenomenon that crosses Mexico integrates diverse flows that no longer originate only from Central America, but also include people from South America and the Caribbean, as well as those of extra-continental origin; they have in common the predominant intention to reach the United States of America and to confront situations of blockade and high violence on their way. The findings presented here are based on the contributions of the members of a working group committed to research in different areas of the region: Costa Rica, the Guatemala-Mexico border, southern Veracruz, Mexico City and Tijuana, Baja California. The comparative and collaborative method was used, with the systematic exchange of results, methods and references, even shared field stays, to explore the correspondences and dissonances between expressions of the same phenomenon in different contexts. In this way, we were able to analyze how actors and spaces of migration are constituted, and how each context potentiates certain processes (securitization, militarization, vertical border, racialization, entrapment) that together redraw the global migratory field.
Víctor Hugo Acuña Ortega (Ed.). (2024). Antonino de Barruel. Para la historia. Un relato de la guerra contra Walker. San José: Editorial UCR. [pp. 196]
Dossier’s Presentation. Breaking Points: Changes and Ruptures in Mobilities in the Latin American Migration Field
From Containment to Exclusion: Impacts of CBP One Repeal on Access to Asylum
(Dis)care: Body, Speed and Dematerialization
This essay examines autoethnography as a way of understanding the world. Thus, and committed to a science that prioritizes the body and disputes traditional senses of positivist work. It takes into account the epistemic privilege of the feminist point of view. We also start from an epistemology of affections and emotions, which places life itself at the center. From there, we discuss about and about an ethics of care, focusing on maternity as a political act, as a transforming action that confronts, in some way, the permanent demand of the capitalist system. Motherhood, as an institution not subservient to power, does not exist as such; however, we inhabit our bodies integrally of their capacities and potencies, which allows us to make this institution a daily weaving.
Libro centroamericano de los muertos, in my Hand
Reflections on the Novel Tocar a Diana by Anacristina Rossi