Hispanic Studies

Almost a century before the “mass emigration” of Jews from Morocco during the mid-twentieth century, to Israel and to destinations in the West, Moroccan Jews had been engaging in long-distance emigrations, typically from the Spanish-dominated northern part of that country to Latin America. This article surveys the state of research pertaining to this long-lasting migratory episode. I point at the conspicuous lack of interest among MENA-and Israel-Studies scholars in the topic, and conclude by suggesting that this migration episode has potential contribution to the aforementioned areas of study.

ملخص: الهجرة اليهودية المغربية إلى أمريکا اللاتينية: أوضاع البحوث
والاتجاهات الجديدة
قرابة قرن قبل ”الهجرة الجماعية“ لليهود من المغرب خلال منتصف القرن
العشرين إلى إسرائيل وجهات أخرى في الغرب، انخرط اليهود المغاربة في الهجرة
لمسافات طويلة، ومعظمهم من الجزء الشمالي من البلاد الذي كان يهيمن عليه
الإسبان إلى أمريکا اللاتينية. وترک هؤلاء الرواد الأوائل بصمات على الثقافات
اليهودية المغربية الدائمة في هذا المحتوى، حتى في الأيام الحالية. وتفحص هذه
المقالة وضع البحوث المتعلقة بهذه الهجرة طويلة الأمد. وهنا أود الإشارة إلى
الاهتمام الکبير بين الباحثين الناطقين بالإسبانية والبرتغالية من حقول الدراسات
الأمريکية والايبيرية اللاتينية، من جهة؛ وإلى غياب واضح لهذه الدراسات في
العالم العربي وإسرائيل من جهة أخرى، وهذا فضلا عن الباحثين الذين ير زون ک
على الهجرة المغربية المعاصرة. ما أن تاريخ الهجرة المحلي لديه إسهامات محتملة ک
في مجالات الاهتمام المذ ورة أعلاه، وأنه يمکن أن تعمل على تفکيک الروايات ک
الشائعة عن رحيل اليهود الموجه سياسيا من الأراضي المسلمة العربية.

With two new publications, the Museum of Mormon History in Mexico has firmly established itself as a leading venue for the production of Mormon history in Mexico. The Spanish translation and English commentary on Part 1 of F. LaMond Tulllis's Mormons in Mexico is a significant contribution to both Spanish and English readers. This text, published through Deseret Book, makes a valuable resource available to Spanish speakers. It also offers an impressive correction of documentary errors in Tullis's interpretation and historical data. A second significant contribution to the literature on the same subject is a series of four articles available in Spanish or English by Fernando R. Gómez Páez (museum president). Read side by side, the translation of Tullis's book and this new selection of articles by the museum's president provide a worthwhile and balanced introduction to Mexican Mormon history. Readers will recognize that Mormon history in Mexico extends well beyond the colonies in Chihuahua and Sonora. The most interesting stories may very well come from central Mexico. Mexican Mormons now have a significant voice in the writing of their own Mormon histories.

The focus of this comparative, pan-Iberian study is on the negotiation of identity and hybrid cultural production in early twenty-first-century Spain and Portugal. I identify here two subgenres of indie and electronic music scenes and analyze how the handful of musicians that comprise these burgeoning movements are fighting to keep their respective national cultural traditions alive in the face of iTunes, mp3s, and P2P filesharing that have universalized a certain form of pop music which cuts across languages and cultures. The hybrid musicians I interviewed for this project combine flamenco or fado with a variety of indie sounds: rock, pop, power pop, hip hop, trip hop, post punk, spaghetti western, shoegaze, or experimental electronic. The end result is a musical production which simultaneously attempts to voice their nationality as well as their generation. They are the torchbearers of tradition for an Iberian generation raised on The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, The Clash, The Replacements, Nirvana, and The Strokes. Their music references these and other global indie bands alongside those of twentieth century Iberian urban folk icons--Bambino, Camarón de la Isla, Enrique Morente, Amália Rodrigues, Alfredo Marceneiro, and Carlos do Carmo. I have developed a framework with which to contextualize and conceptualize the various issues addressed by these bands: authenticity, globalization, nostalgia, cultural capital, national-gender identity, and the economic crisis plaguing contemporary Europe.

El uso social de la lengua suscita a diario dudas y curiosidades. Dudamos al elegir un método para aprender
una lengua, ignoramos cuántas lenguas se hablan en el mundo, tenemos la sensación de que cada vez
hablamos peor; pensamos que los emoticonos vienen a empobrecer la lengua; nos da la impresión de que, con
las posverdades, cada uno puede decir libremente lo que quiera y sospechamos que la lengua del futuro
podría ser un inglés global. Tales cuestiones, tan cotidianas, nacen de preguntas más profundas: ¿cómo
emergieron las lenguas?, ¿cómo se adquieren?, ¿cómo varían y cambian?, ¿cómo se nos engaña
manipulando la lengua? Esta obra intenta responder a grandes cuestiones sobre la lengua apelando a su
naturaleza social. Nos interesan la lengua y la gente; nos interesan las secuelas de Babel.

Se trata, en resumen, de un libro útil, bien estructurado, claro, abierto a un amplio público, que combina conocimientos y experiencias en diversos campos y que aporta elementos contrastados y seguros al análisis del español de la publicidad y de cómo se usa para atraer a la población hispanohablante de los Estados Unidos.

Este artículo presenta pruebas documentales y evidencias encontradas en el patrimonio arquitectónico que certifican la existencia de una comunidad de musulmanes peninsulares (andalusíes) y magrebíes en la etapa de formación temprana de las sociedades americanas durante el siglo XVI y, más específicamente, en la isla Española, mostrando de manera fehaciente que el monumento principal de la etapa de construcción inicial de la ciudad de Santo Domingo de Guzmán, la catedral de Santa María la Menor, fue obra de alarifes musulmanes.

With a foreword by renowned novelist Rolando Hinojosa-Smith and comprised of personal essays about the impact of drug violence on life and culture along the U.S.-Mexico border, the anthology combines writings by residents of both countries. Mexican authors Liliana Blum, Lolita Bosch, and Diego Osorno write riveting, first-hand accounts about the clashes between the drug cartels and citizens' attempts to resist the criminals. American authors, including José Antonio Rodríguez and José Skinner, focus on how the corruption and bloodshed have affected the bi-national and bi-cultural existence of families and individuals. Maria Cristina Cigarroa shares her poignant memories of life in her grandparents’ home now abandoned in Nuevo Laredo.

In their introduction, editors Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso write that this anthology was “born of a vision to bear witness to how this violence has shattered life on the border, to remember the past, but also to point to the possibilities of a better future.” The personal essays in this collection humanize the news stories and are a must-read for anyone interested in how this fragile way of life between two cultures, languages and countries has been undermined by the drug trade and the crime that accompanies it, with ramifications far beyond the border region.

¿Se está haciendo lo que se debe por el español, como se debe y por quien se debe? ¿Hay realmente una voluntad política hispánica a favor de la lengua común, esto es, traducida en organización, cuidado, respeto, estructura, presupuestos? ¿Se coloca  favorablemente el español en el mapa de las nuevas tecnologías, se gestiona bien ese aspecto, se sacan los réditos oportunos a todas las actividades que se adjetivan como electrónicas: banca, comercio, correo, publicidad, relación con el ciudadano, servicios? ¿La empresa privada acude coordinadamente a cooperar, es consciente de la necesidad de su participación? ¿Las organizaciones internacionales son fiel reflejo lingüístico de la importancia que, se supone, tiene la lengua que expresa la cultura hispanoamericana? ¿Está bien organizada y gestionada la relación que se produce entre la lengua que recibe a los inmigrantes y la que estos llevan consigo? ¿Será el destino del español permanecer exclusivamente al servicio de su comunidad cultural, sin proyección externa, como el árabe sólo sirve a la comunidad religiosa islámica?
Si la respuesta a estas y similares preguntas fuera claramente afirmativa o rotundamente negativa, las páginas siguientes sobrarían, en el primer caso, y serían insuficientes, en el segundo: la lengua española no enfrentaría ningún reto. Tampoco basta con una cómoda contestación, del tipo “no lo necesario,” igualmente imprecisa e inexacta. Su intención es presentar un panorama lo suficientemente amplio y lo bastante profundo de los retos de la lengua española y las márgenes entre las que se mueve este idioma, para que el siempre hipotético lector se haga su composición de lugar. Se invita a la meditación, desde una reflexión personal que se inició a finales de los años sesenta, en los albores de esta impresionante transformación de la sociedad. Hay soluciones, pero no recetas, lo cual es políticamente poco conveniente, porque la tendencia fácil es buscar al taumaturgo de las recetas, aunque nunca hayan funcionado, y no al técnico de las soluciones, generalmente más lentas y trabajosas.


Tabla de contenido ...... 2
Prólogo: retos y márgenes... 4
Agradecimientos ...... 6
I. EN BUSCA DE LA IDENTIDAD ..... 7
De quinientos en quinientos años...... 7
Identidad y forma de la lengua  8
Vivir en la diversidad. 13
Desde la normalidad del bilingüismo ........... 13
Lengua y cultura ... 14
Se puede decir más... 14
Otros y nos-otros..... 15
Conceptos.. 15
Lengua, historia y educación ........ 16
La máquina cultural ...18
El español, lengua internacional ... 19
Una lengua internacional ...... 20
Recapitulación histórica 21
Español, lenguas españolas y lenguas hispánicas 23
La internacionalidad económica......... 24
Lengua y tecnología en el mercado internacional 27
Perspectiva comunitaria......... 28
Perspectiva española ..... 29
Identidad, estereotipo e imagen internacional .... 30
II. La Lengua Española en Internet.. 38
Planteamiento... 38
Presencia en la red ..... 40
Mitos y ritos ......... 42
Las cifras también bailan ...... 51
Los ciudadanos y la técnica .............. 58
El español de Internet.. 59
Incrementar la presencia de la lengua española .. 64
El área de Lenguas y Lingüística de EducaRed...... 68
Tecnología y enseñanza de la lengua......... 69
La adscripción de la tecnología a la enseñanza de las lenguas .... 70
La enseñanza de lenguas con la ayuda de la computadora (ELAC) y la adquisición de segundas lenguas 71
La integración de la tecnología en el aula .... 72
ELAC ......  72
ELAC y la Teoría Sociocultural de Vygotski ...... 72
Los instrumentos, su selección y sus ventajas .... 74
Ventajas e inconvenientes .......... 76
Reflexiones ........... 76
III. Los dos sentidos de la frontera norteamericana ........ 78
Pluralidad del español en los Estados Unidos de América .... 78
La periodización del español norteamericano....... 79
Descripción general de los Estados Unidos ..... 84
Datos de los hispanos y el español.... 87
La identidad social  90
Algunas reflexiones sobre la norma y la norma hispánica en los EUA.... 94
La dimensión de la frontera ........ 100
Libros y productos editoriales..102
De rasquachis, gonzos y zoot-suiters ...... 104
El spanglish inventado 107
El español de los EUA en tres líneas léxicas ... 110
Español y Lengua Hispana en la educación norteamericana .. 113
Evaluación..........................................................................................121
La amenaza hispánica .... 122
La recuperación patrimonial en los EUA..... 127
Canarios en Tejas y Luisiana 128
Algunas líneas concluyentes ........... 132
IV. Cultura al margen: inmigración y lengua .... 135
El otro y el mismo ........ 136
La invención de la historia 138
La cultura lingüística139
El fenómeno de la inmigración 141
La lengua y cultura de origen y su mantenimiento 144
El proceso del aprendizaje 147
Aptitud y actitud en el aprendizaje de la lengua ..... 148
El temor al enfrentamiento 149
Bibliografía 153

An ideal collection of articles for English-speaking pastoral ministers and parishioners looking to become familiar with the traditions of Spanish-speaking communities, an ever more vital and vibrant part of church life in the United States. Written in both English and Spanish, each of these articles focuses on a different tradition or custom of the Catholic Church, especially as celebrated in the Spanish-speaking cultures of the world. Each section of the book provides reflection questions that can also be used in classes or discussion groups.

Nepantla Familias brings together Mexican American narratives that explore and negotiate the many permutations of living in between different worlds—how the authors or their characters create, or fail to create, a cohesive identity amid the contradictions in their lives. Nepantla—or living in the in-between space of the borderland—is the focus of this anthology. The essays, poems, and short stories explore the in-between moments in Mexican American life—the family dynamics of living between traditional and contemporary worlds, between Spanish and English, between cultures with traditional and shifting identities. In times of change, family values are either adapted or discarded in the quest for self-discovery, part of the process of selecting and composing elements of a changing identity.

Edited by award-winning writer and scholar Sergio Troncoso, this anthology includes works from familiar and acclaimed voices such as David Dorado Romo, Sandra Cisneros, Alex Espinoza, Reyna Grande, and Francisco Cantú, as well as from important new voices, such as Stephanie Li, David Dominguez, and ire’ne lara silva. These are writers who open and expose the in-between places: through or at borders; among the past, present, and future; from tradition to innovation; between languages; in gender; about the wounds of the past and the victories of the present; of life and death.

Sergio Troncoso, David Dorado Romo, Reyna Grande, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Francisco Cantú, Rigoberto González, Alex Espinoza, Domingo Martinez, Oscar Cásares, Lorraine M. López, David Dominguez, Stephanie Li, Sheryl Luna, José Antonio Rodríguez, Deborah Paredez, Octavio Quintanilla, Sandra Cisneros, Diana Marie Delgado, Diana López, Severo Perez, Octavio Solis, ire'ne lara silva, Rubén Degollado, Helena María Viramontes, Daniel Chacón, Matt Mendez.

This paper considers Sergio Troncoso's _From This Wicked Patch of Dust_ as a resistance novel. I argue that Troncoso relies on form, language, and indigenous myths and symbols to resist dominant American linguistic authority and popular imagination and to embrace his mestizo and Chicano heritage. Yet, he does not call for a complete return to old Mexico, which is itself plagued by problems of androcentrism. Instead, he calls for a Chicano identity that is defined by hybridity, ambiguity and fluidity.

Adapted to survive in the interface between land and sea, mangroves are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. They are also highly adaptive to the imagination, with the theme of the mangrove being differently signified across texts, languages and communities as a place to find death in the tropics, a nature tourism destination, endangered environment, magical wood, refuge for maroons and revolutionaries, and source of livelihoods. The cultural malleability of mangroves mirrors their natural adaptability. It also echoes the varied and rhizomatic identities and imaginaries of the peoples of the tropical Americas. Relevant cultural texts produced in the region support experimentations with mangroves as a raw material susceptible to being worked in order to explain diverse realities. In order to highlight the relevance and malleability of mangrove ecosystems, this paper explores resignifications of socioecological interactions at the Ecological Mangrove Reserve Cayapas-Mataje in Ecuador through the lens of photographer Felipe Jácome. Jácome's photographic essay Los Reyes del Manglar [The Kings of the Mangrove] provides rich material to study the rhizomatic evolution of the theme of the mangrove and its entanglements with people's lives, cultures and histories. I argue that cultural representations of mangroves can go beyond their metaphorical recovery to support environmental justice. This essay is also informed by extant research on the important role of mangrove forests for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, which locates these socioecological systems at the centre of people's struggle for climate justice.

The Lost Castilian Epic The main aim of the paper is to present the most important Castilian epic poems belonging to the so-called lost epic, i.e. anonymous texts that have not survived to our times, but one can assume with a high degree of probability that they existed, first in oral circulation, and later in prose versions in chronicle and in romancero. The existence of old Castilian epic is undermined by the individualistic theory of the origin of epic poems authored by the French researcher Joseph Bédier, who believed that there were only poems that have survived in writing, but two other theories undermine these assumptions: the neotraditional theory of the Spanish medievalist Ramón Menéndez Pidal and the eclectic theory proposed by the British hispanist Alan Deyermond. Both agree on the existence of the Castilian epic in oral tradition, with each assuming their different origin and a different number of unpreserved poems. They also agree on the causes of the disappearance of the oldest Castilian epic songs, which, even if written down, could share the fate of thousands of manuscripts destroyed due to wars, fi res or normal wear and tear. Only two have survived in original versions: Th e Poem of the Cid in an incomplete manuscript from the first half of the 14th century and a hundred verses of the Roncesvalles (Roncevaux) poem in a manuscript also from the beginning of the 14th century. Two other epic works are known thanks to later adaptations of the texts to the requirements of the erudite epic mester de clerecía (Spanish: craft of the clergy), namely the Poema de Femán González (Poem on Femán González) and Mocedades de Rodrigo (The Youthful Actions of Rodrigo). The former comes from the mid-13th century, while the latter from the mid-14th century.

Nevertheless, there is indirect evidence of the existence of old Castilian epic, including the prose versions of epic legends in medieval Latin and Castilian chronicles, as well as the occurrence of typical epic motifs in late medieval and renaissance romances, which are believed to have been created by cutting longer poems into shorter texts. The two 13th-century Latin chronicles, Chronicon mundi by Lucas de Tuy and De rebus Hispaniae by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, contain the richest epic material, while among the Castilian chronicles Estoria de España, commonly known under the title Primera Crónica General given by Menéndez Pidal, and Crónica de 1344, stand out in this respect.

The main body of the paper is a discussion of the lost poems based on the Castilian chronicles mentioned above. The list includes only those songs whose existence is recognized by the majority of medievalists, i.e.: Bernardo del Carpio, Mainete, La condesa traidora (Treacherous Countess), Cantar de los siete infantes de Lara (Song of the Seven Lara Princes), Romanz del Infant García (A Romance about Infanta García) andCantar de Sancho II y el cerco de Zamora (Song of Sancho II and the siege of Zamora). For each text, a summary is provided along with the sources in which variants of the poems have survived, sometimes directly indicating the existence of today lost epic songs.

El artículo estudia la influencia del pensamiento existencialista en dos filmes cubanos de los años 50 y 60: el extravagante mediometraje de Mario Barral, De espaldas (1956) y el olvidado filme de Alberto Roldán, La ausencia (1968). En ambos casos se trata de obras con aspiraciones artísticas y experimentales que intentaban dar un giro al cine que se venía haciendo en la Cuba de aquellos tiempos. La película de Barral rompe con las visiones estereotípicas dominantes en el periodo prerrevolucionario; la de Roldán muestra el impacto de un existencialismo engagé, el único posible durante el periodo de consolidación de la Revolución.

This books offers an assessment of the influence, importance and impact of a body of films from the mid 1970s to date that, it argues, constitute a Latin American Queer Cinema. This work aims to articulate a theorisation issues surrounding homosexuality and queer corporeality in different Latin American societies: the first chapter analyses notions of gender and sexuality that are paramount in the construction of such identities for queer subjects in Latin America. The second chapter deals with issues of male effeminacy, how the stereotype of the maricón has become synonymous with homosexuality in the popular imaginary, and how it might be reclaimed as authentic. Chapter Three analyses issues of masculine homosexuality in a series of films in which the main protagonists do not correspond to this stereotype -- the closet and passing are studied as are notions of hetero-patriarchy and masculinity. Chapter Four focuses on the relationship between mestizo identity and homosexuality, gay identity and the race-class nexus, technologies of the body, and gay youth identities. Chapter Five explores cross-dressing and transvestism in fiction cinema and how such films try to challenge notions of trans identity and even queer identity, but ultimately fail to achieve this as they all seem to subscribe to notions of gender and sexuality as understood and assimilated within heteronormativity. Finally Chapter Six explores issues of queer masculinity in relation to adult male cinema and how the work of an emergent pornographic house in Mexico i.e. Mecos Films aims to disavow the figure of the Latin(o) man that circulates in the Latin American and foreign queer imaginary.

“On good days I feel I am a bridge. On bad days I just feel alone,” Sergio Troncoso writes in this riveting collection of sixteen personal essays in which he seeks to connect the humanity of his Mexican family to people he meets on the East Coast, including his wife’s Jewish kin. Raised in a home steps from the Mexican border in El Paso, Texas, Troncoso crossed what seemed an even more imposing border when he left home to attend Harvard College.

Initially, “outsider status” was thrust upon him; later, he adopted it willingly, writing about the Southwest and Chicanos in an effort to communicate who he was and where he came from to those unfamiliar with his childhood world. He wrote to maintain his ties to his parents and his abuelita, and to fight against the elitism he experienced at an Ivy League school. “I was torn,” he writes, “between the people I loved at home and the ideas I devoured away from home.”

Troncoso writes to preserve his connections to the past, but he puts pen to paper just as much for the future. In his three-part essay entitled “Letter to My Young Sons,” he documents the terror of his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and the ups and downs of her surgery and treatment. Other essays convey the joys and frustrations of fatherhood, his uneasy relationship with his elderly father, and the impact his wife’s Jewish heritage and religion have on his Mexican-American identity.

Crossing Borders: Personal Essays reveals a writer, father and husband who has crossed linguistic, cultural and intellectual borders to provoke debate about contemporary Mexican-American identity.  Challenging assumptions about literature, the role of writers in America, fatherhood and family, these essays bridge the chasm between the poverty of the border region and the highest echelons of success in America. Troncoso writes with the deepest faith in humanity about sacrifice, commitment and honesty.

The premise of this book is simple: if the chapter writers could go back in time and talk with themselves when they began their studies, what advice would they give? Isn’t hindsight a bonus? Each chapter will offer this hindsight. The chapters will not be their personal stories, but useful lessons learned through their experiences. Those lessons will be offered to aspiring and current graduate students to help ensure that their studies are successful. Chapters contain contributions from a range of academics and academic-practitioners, from those getting established in their careers to those that are more novice and emergent. Its contributors include scholars from many universities throughout the United States. Contributors cover essential aspects of graduate study, such as writing and publishing, relationships with supervisors, utilizing rejection and critique, and becoming a researcher. Contributors write of studying for higher degrees and coping with family, illness, disability, and distance. Culture is bridged between Hispanic scholars and their colleagues in mainstream academia, and international students offer advice to those coming to these shores to study. This volume provides indispensable advice that every graduate student could utilize and follows on from the successful publication of Postgraduate Study in Aotearoa New Zealand: Surviving and Succeeding (McMaster & Murphy, 2014). The US edition will be part of an international ‘survive and succeed’ series currently being produced in Australia, the UK and South Africa.

In defiance of general trends in ethnic-minority broadcasting, U.S. Spanish-language radio enjoyed remarkably consistent growth from its beginnings in the 1920s to its commercial maturation in the 1960s and 1970s. To explain how this happened, this study situates broadcasting in Spanish within the context of foreign-language (or “ethnic”) radio. It then elucidates the factors behind its sustained increase in popularity and commercial viability over its first 50 years, along with the reasons why programming in other tongues diminished. Spanish-language radio’s early success owed not only to demography but also to Latin America’s proximity to the United States, circular flows of entertainers, mutual attitudes between Anglos and Hispanics, and the creative initiatives of Hispanic radio executives, brokers, and advertisers.