It has often been suggested that there are two reasons for the particular vitality of the ethnohistory of colonial Mesoamerica. John Kicza eloquently articulated these reasons not long ago (1995, 240) as first, the integrity and vigor of native civilizations from pre-Conquest to modern times, and secondly, the richness and variety of relevant colonial documentation. Without taking issue with this rationale at allindeed, working from the assumption that we may take for granted these two factorsI would like to suggest that a third factor is equally pertinent; to wit, the concatenation of activity by a wide variety of scholars in such a way as to create a collective vision of method and interpretation and a constructive momentum that realizes and further develops that vision.

This study analyzes the work of Juana Manuela Gorriti, one of the most prominent women writers in nineteenth-century Argentina. It unravels the notions that structure Gorriti's ideas of literature, history, and nation and illustrates how her work established close links between memory, continuity, and the role of women in the creation of national identities in Latin America. Her short stories and autobiographical pieces are situated within their historical context and literary milieu. The Rosas dictatorship and its aftermath are examined as played out in Gorriti's fiction, in stories where violence against women, the ghostly, and popular culture became central themes through which Gorriti created myths of personal history and national identity. The essay also explores the ways in which her female characters illustrate the strategies of ordinary women for turning their social constraints into public action.

In the last ten years, the rural history of the colonial Río de la Plata and to a lesser extent that of the first half of the nineteenth century have witnessed an unprecedented boom. Research projects, new sets of questions, and the utilization of new sources and methodologies have all proliferated. Today we have undoubtedly come a long way in our understanding of these issues from where we were only a decade ago.

Despite the increasing sensitivity of researchers to historical and contemporary landscape manipulations in the Amazon basin, there is still a powerful consensus in both popular and scholarly literatures that, with the exception of predatory deforestation, the physical environment of the region is largely unmodified by human intervention. An emerging body of scholarship has challenged this view by describing ways that Amazonian populations have managed terrestrial ecosystems on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. In this research report, we present both new and previously published data showing that Amazonians also intervene in fluvial systems, manipulating rivers and streams to modify the landscape. We argue that these practices, occurring in many different forms, are widespread and commonplace throughout the region, and that, taken together with the emerging evidence for terrestrial manipulation, provide compelling reason for a fundamental reassessment of conventional views of Amazonian nature.

Much of the literature on Latin American women's movements finds that movements have grown weaker since transitions to democracy in part because of the institutionalization of gender policy within states. This article advances an alternative argument drawing on evidence from the Chilean case. Using a historical institutionalist approach and the framework of state feminism, I outline the way Chile's Servicio Nacional de la Mujer (SERNAM) has altered the institutional context in which women's movements act. I show that SERNAM has affected both the shape of the movement (most notably the power relations among its various segments) and the strategies that different segments employ to pursue their interests. I argue that instead of weakening the women's movement, SERNAM actually provides the movement with important resources, most notably a discourse of women's equality and a set of objectives around which to mobilize. There is evidence that Chilean women's organizations are responding to this new institutional context by linking up previously dispersed groups, using SERNAM's own discourse to pressure the state to fulfill its commitments to women and, most importantly, to ensure that, in addition to gender, class and ethnicity are also addressed as sources of women's marginalization.