En el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de Stanford organizamos la semana pasada un taller para nuestros profesores de lenguas. Además del Náhuatl y Quechua que se enseñan en Stanford, tuvimos maestros de Kichwa, Hñähñu, Tseltal, Mocho’ y Kaqchikel. Durante varios días un grupo de intelectuales indígenas se dedicaron a trabajar…

My dear friend Cesar has corrected a mistake in this memory. In keeping with the Popperian ethos of learning from mistakes, I should have looked for the old university magazines. It turns out that we published together TWO articles on Popper. One was in a Festrschrift that Abe Nonsik edited…

As a social scientist, I often label myself a positivist. I still believe that there are multiple paths and ways of acquiring knowledge about the world that surrounds us, including history, narrative, art and forms of spiritual awareness. But in my scientific research and scholarly work I believe that the…

Con ésta expresión, los mexicanos recordamos, sin saberlo, las epidemias del huey cocoliztli. Esta frase por demás coloquial y poco dramática refleja un pasado que en realidad no es muy remoto — tan sólo unas 15 generaciones (si las medimos en 30 años cada una). El Diccionario de la Real…

(8 Agosto 2022) Prodigio Lo más sorprendente es que un muchacho de clase media, creciendo en diversas ciudades del país en su niñez, acabara en la Ciudad de México (al final adquiriendo una marcada identidad de defeño o chilango) y accediendo a una adolescencia estimulante y llena de oportunidades. Ese es el prodigio. Las…

In my recent post reflecting on pandemics in prehispanic Mexico I mentioned the following idea regarding the nature of the indigenous historical sources: We have only started to understand that the pictorial narratives in the Florentine Codex are arguably more important than the Spanish language texts. Those “pinturas” are not…

Para cualquier observador con un poco de sensibilidad resulta claro que el desarrollo turístico típico de las islas del Caribe exhibe algunos de los peores rasgos del capitalismo moderno combinado con la insensibilidad cultural asociado estereotípicamente con los viajeros provenientes de Estados Unidos: un enorme crucero arribando a un puerto…

Motivated by the twin exhibits, both called Mixpantli, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), in a recent interview I expressed in words the sorrow that has accompanied me throughout this pandemic: “It pains me to understand that so much of past human suffering —the losses that occurred…

Ever since I came to live in the United States, 20 years ago, our family celebrates Día de Muertos on November 2nd. We also celebrate Halloween on October 31. By now it is somewhat obvious for our children to think of both our Ofrenda and our Halloween decorations as the…