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North West Doctoral Training Centre!

Language-Based Area Studies

Pathway!
Postgraduate Symposium on!
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Latin American and

Caribbean Studies!
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Hanson Room, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building!

University of Manchester!
16 May 2013!

PROGRAMME!
Supported by !
artsmethods@manchester!
and!
North West Doctoral Training Centre!

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9.45: WELCOME, Peter Wade (LBAS Pathway leader, University of Manchester)!
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Panel 1 (Chair: Cornelia Grabner, University of Lancaster)!

10.0
0

Gustavo
Carvajal

SPLAS,
Manchester

The horrors of representation and the 'other' Chilean

experience in Arturo Fontaine's La vida doble

10.3
5

Nicola
AstudilloJones

SPLAS,
Manchester

The reception of magical realism and its implications

for the popular understanding of Latin America in
contemporary Britain

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11.10-11.35: COFFEE/TEA!
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Panel 2 (Chair: Peter Wade, University of Manchester)!

11.3
5

Tamara de
Ins Antn

SPLAS,
Manchester

Publishing Latin American womens erotic fiction in the

Anglophone market

12.1
0

Ignacio
Aguil

SPLAS,
Manchester

Indios a la moda: fashion photography and race in

Argentina

12.4
5

Antonia
Manresa

Iberian and
Latin American
Studies,
Newcastle
University

The lowland Kichwas of Ecuador: a claim for origin or

ethnicity?

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1.20-2.20: LUNCH!
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Panel 3 (Chair: James Scorer, University of Manchester)!

2.2
0

Margarita
Caldern

Linguistics,
Lancaster

Connections and disconnections between home and

school literacy practices in Chile

2.5
5

Alejandra
Isaza

SPLAS,
Manchester

Tuning my ideas - the writing process of research

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3.30-4.00: TEA/COFFEE!
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Panel 4 (Chair: Andrew Redden, University of Liverpool)!

4.0
0

Jenny Wattrus

History and
Cultural
Studies,
Lancaster

Hugo Chvez: the democratic caudillo

4.3
5

Pablo Matias
Bradbury

CLAS, Liverpool

Liberation theology, society and the Argentine

dictatorships, 1960-1990

5.1
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Daniel S.
Lacerda

Management
School,
Lancaster
University

The discourse on favelas analysing political

discourse on Brazilian slums

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5.45: CONCLUDING REMARKS!

6.00: END!
6.00 - 7.00: Wine reception!

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Abstracts!

Gustavo Carvajal (SPLAS, Manchester) The horrors of representation and the 'other'
Chilean experience in Arturo Fontaine's La vida doble!

This paper aims to explore Arturo Fontaine's La vida doble (2010), one of several recent Chilean
novels that focus on the problem of representation of political violence carried out against women
under General Augusto Pinochet's brutal regime between 1973 and 1990. Previous studies on
early post-coup and post-dictatorship fictions written in Chile have shown the emphasis in these
texts of an aesthetic shaped by the fragmentary and residual (Richard 1993), a politically charged
linguistic experimentation (Brito 1994) and the strategic use of the allegorical (Avelar 1999), when
addressing Chile's democratic crisis. In this paper, I will explain how the avant-garde narrative
strategies of previous novels may risk the dissolution of what I call the 'other' Chilean experience
(political torture, disappearances and murder). In this context I will argue that Fontaine's text can
be read as an attempt to represent the horror with recourse to conventional narrative strategies,
but also acknowledging the limitations of the use of language to bear witness to political violence in
Chile.!
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Nicola Astudillo-Jones (SPLAS, Manchester) The reception of magical realism and its
implications for the popular understanding of Latin America in contemporary Britain!

The historical trajectory of Latin American magical realism in academia and the UK press reveals
how the concept underwent a period of popularisation in the late twentieth century, coinciding with
an embrace of the foreign Other under globalisation and postmodernism. Although many
academics, journalists and writers have come to disdain the association of Latin America with
magical realism since then, this paper will propose that the contemporary British press continues to
reproduce the image of magical realism as shorthand for Latin America, thereby prolonging its
synonymy with the continent for a popular audience. This in turn raises the question of whether this
magical realist formula, and the more general tendency to stereotype Latin America through
exoticism, is reflected in the wider exposition of Latin America to the general public. Drawing on
theories of cultural consumption, this paper will propose some tentative questions as to how Latin
American identity is constructed in the UK via everyday interactions with Latin America, (e.g.
cinema, restaurants and clubs) and how concepts that may explain the popular expansion of
magical realism in the 1980s and 1990s, (e.g. nostalgia, time-space compression,
cosmopolitanism), could still be reasons for the popular consumption of Latin America in Britain
today.!

Tamara de Ins Antn (SPLAS, Manchester) Publishing Latin American womens erotic
fiction in the Anglophone market!

This analysis is based on the core-periphery model that structures the 4 levels composing the
world system of translation (Heilbron 1999) in which language groups are the basic unit, with the
English language holding a hyper-central position. This core-periphery model divides languages in
4 different groups regarding the percentage of translations in which they are used as source
language. Moreover, this model can be applied to other works which, from a sociological
perspective, analyze the functioning of translation practices in relation to the publishing field and
the traditional binary system that opposes small- to large-scale circulation of books. The final
purpose of this analysis is to propose a similar core-periphery model able to describe the different
levels of peripheralization faced by Latin American womens erotic fiction in the process of being
translated and published in the Anglophone market.!

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Ignacio Aguil (SPLAS, Manchester) Indios a la moda: fashion photography and race in
Argentina!

This presentation analysesHuellas (2000), a calendar by Argentinian fashion photographer Gaby

Herbstein in which fashion models are portrayed performing different indigenous cultures, both
contemporary and extinct. AlthoughHuellasallegedly celebrates indigenous cultures, the
photographs end up reinforcing stereotypical constructions of indigeneity and white fantasies of
mastery andpossession. However, this presentation will demonstrate that Huellasallows an
additional reading as a site of ambivalence in which the possibility of a critique of Argentinas
racism can emerge. This is because the camp performance of indigeneity by the fashion models
and the absence of the real Amerindian body unwittingly de-naturalise the racist politics that
positions white as a neutral and as norm.!

Antonia Manresa (Iberian and Latin American Studies, Newcastle University) The lowland
Kichwas of Ecuador: a claim for origin or ethnicity?!
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In this paper I explore and challenge the description of the Lowland Kichwas as an ethnic group,
linked to a fixed ancestral past that can be traced linearly through time as a measure of
authenticity, i.e. as a search for origin. Instead I explore the notion of ethnogensis as discussed
by Whitten, 2008 and Schwartz & Salomon, 1999 considering the Lowland Kichwas as an
intrinsically diverse ethnic group, understood as a contemporary expression of a continual sociohistorical process of transformation. I argue that Lowland Kichwas should be considered a
cohesive ethnic group precisely because they express a high degree of organic diversity as a
means of constituting unity. Historically, Lowland Kichwas were thought of as less authentic
Amazonians a highly hybrid culture, referred to as the Indios mansos literally the tamed Indians
in colonial terms (Taylor, 1999). Today this conceptualization has political implications. Based on
linguistic characteristics they nominated as pueblo and so a subgroup of the Kichwa Nationality
since they speak Kichwa perceived as a highland language rather than a distinct Amazonian
language. I attempt to demonstrate that though this group is indeed diverse, studied in
ethnographic research as composed of at least two distinct groups the Quijos Kichwas and
Canelos Kichwas, they do share important common core elements in their conceptualization of
their ethnicity. I argue that the sharing of significant aspects of their socio-cosmology as a
contemporary ethnicity can only be understood as drawing on their existent organic diversity. I
conclude that rather than their diversity undermining their claim as an ethnic group, it strengthens
it, by demonstrating an active process of cohesion and unity. Instead of perceived as being victims
of a partial and limited reproduction of their past through a progressive loss of identity, Lowland
Kichwas should be understood as a contemporary, flexible and constantly transforming ethnic
group, much like any other Amazonian ethnicity.!

Margarita Caldern (Linguistics, Lancaster) Connections and disconnections between

home and school literacy practices in Chile!

This presentation explores the school and home literacy practices in economically disadvantaged
settings in Chile. To do so, an ethnographic and participatory approach was developed to observe
home and school on a sample of 20 students. Participants in the study were 7 to 10 years old
Chilean students from two different schools. Both schools are situated in disadvantaged areas of
Santiago, the capital of Chile. !
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Unstructured observation was carried out to gather information about reading and writing
practices and literacy methods in each school. School teachers and authorities were interviewed
and a questionnaire was used to choose the case studies. Participants were interviewed to discuss
their practices and perceptions and then visited at home to observe their environment and routines
regarding literacy practices. !
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Preliminary findings raised interesting issues in regard to the role of school literacies at home.
School literacies are perceived as a standard of good practice of literacy at home. In consequence,
parents and children assume school literacy practices as the correct way to practice/develop/
teach/use reading and writing in any context. This means that parents and children will assume
that other practices, not imparted at school, are wrong or not worthy. !
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All in all, by analyzing literacy practices at school and home I reflect about the role of
literacy in this particular environment and to what extent and how the context impacts on literacy
practices.!

Alejandra Isaza (SPLAS, Manchester) Tuning my ideas - the writing process of research!
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In this presentation I want to share the conclusions and problems that I have found in my research
so far. I am currently in my third year as a PhD student and my research project is called The
musical construction of the nation: music, politics and state in Colombia, 18481910; through the
writing process I have been able to develop, with the help of my advisors, ways to confront the
data that I collected during my fieldwork with the bibliographical material from my literature
reviews. In this process I have also found theoretical problems that pose a challenge to the
planned scope of my research.!
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Jenny Wattrus (History and Cultural Studies, Lancaster) Hugo Chvez: the democratic
caudillo!

Ever since independence from the Spanish crown the caudillo has been present in Spanish
American politics. Instability and the threat of foreign interference in the early days of
independence called for strong, centralised, paternalistic powers to make economies productive
and enforce unity by consolidating ideas of nationhood. With the passing of time the political
climates, social pressures, economies and external influences have all changed, yet the caudillo
lives on, and to do this he must be able to adapt to the circumstances in which he finds himself.
Notwithstanding this adaptability, four defining features of caudillismo have been highlighted:
personalistic rule, patron-client relationships, violence and problems with succession. This paper
will consider the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chvez as a democratic evolution of the historic
figure of the caudillo. This will be achieved through analysis of his person and policies in relation to
the four major characteristics of caudillismo. In addition, the role of the media is essential in
propagating the image of Chvez as a caudillo, and this image tends to have negative
connotations. Hence the appropriation and application of this figure by Venezuelan national
newspaper El Universal will be considered. This paper therefore aims to bridge the gap between
the historic idea of the caudillo and its present-day manifestations. Chvezs recent death has
created a highly emotive context of succession; as such, I am attempting to historically ground this
assessment of his political career at a time when mythologizing processes may be at work in
Venezuela. !

Pablo Matias Bradbury (CLAS, Liverpool) Liberation theology, society and the Argentine
dictatorships (1960-1990)!

Much has been made of the pro-military stance of the Catholic hierarchy during the 1960s and
1970s in Argentina, but comparatively little has been written about the Christian left. This
presentation will discuss the emergence of a broad movement of radical Christians, centred on the
Movement of Priests for the Third World, who raised the banner of liberation theology and adopted
a political option for Peronism, the dominant ideology among the popular classes. While much of
the hierarchy endorsed and legitimised the military regime, beginning in 1974 the Christian left
suffered a period of systematic repression and persecution. The presentation will therefore also
ask how liberation theology was able to re-emerge in different forms, such as human rights groups,
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during and following the last dictatorship. Moreover, it will look at how the complex nature of these
apparently black and white conflicts have recently resurfaced following the election of Pope
Francis, as his role as Jesuit Provincial and later Archbishop of Buenos Aires has been a highly
controversial issue. !

Daniel S. Lacerda (Management School, Lancaster University) The discourse on favelas

analysing political discourse on Brazilian slums!

My doctoral research investigates the organizing practices that constitute and are constituted by
the precarious conditions of favela spaces (Brazilian slums). The empirical motivation for this
research is the current condition of slums as places of exclusion, and my aim is to understand the
role performed by organizational dynamics in the development of such precarious spaces,
including the mechanisms used to produce/reproduce space. The paper to be presented
investigates the discourse on favelas produced by Brazilian society and consumed in the political
field of local administration. The biased conception of favela determines the creation of Public
Policies that reinforce this influenced notion in the society. This work analyses several texts
extracted from mass media stories and Rio Governments press releases, using Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA). It shows that state praxis reproduces the understanding of slums as a
phenomenon detached from the rest of the society. This alienated vision impacts on different
utterances blaming the poor (analysis 1); perpetuating poverty (analysis 2); and reinforcing
exclusions (analysis 3). The work contributes to the understanding of the current political
manoeuvres to hide favelas and its poverty, and reveal the dynamics of exclusion that happen
even within public programs on favelas.

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