Public education and symbolism in Mexico: reflections from Symbolic Anthropology

In this text, we present a conceptual argumentation about contemporary Mexican education, and we take as our starting point the consideration of the educational process as a cultural proposal for the organization of society. Our main objective focuses on showing the significant nature of this social action and on outlining in a general way the constitutive elements of this symbolic system.

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Territorial dimension and lived space in the Yaqui towns

From the identification and analysis of the significant regularities of the territorial and spatial dimension of the Yaqui communities, I would like to show how, when combining with the movements characteristic to the rite, the space constitutes a text that, apart from showing a specific settlement, establishes rhythmic patterns —regular and repetitive— that are particular to that culture.

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An interpretation about the collective construction of the apparitional miracle

Now I would like to emphasize that current miraculous apparitions are part of new Weltanschauungs, based on native myths and on Christian apparitional myths as well. But at the same time they constitute wider and more ancient traditions (both Mesoamerican and Christian); they are new religious texts which are recycled and resignified in the present.

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DEBATE. Bilingualism and anthropology of language: about a critical reading

Porque hablar dos idiomas… es como saber más. Sistemas comunicativos bilingües ante el México plural (Because speaking two languages… is like knowing more. Bilingual communicative systems before a Plural Mexico); is a book that perhaps many of us, Mexican linguists, -who have known in the field some of the very varied forms of bilingualism in our country- wish we had written.

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DEBATE. Brief postpartum reflection

Some days ago I had the chance to receive the review of my book Porque hablar dos idiomas… es como saber más. Sistemas comunicativos bilingües ante el México plural (Because speaking two languages… is like knowing more. Bilingual communicative systems before a Plural Mexico), written by Professor Leonardo Manrique. I must say that the fact that he, a professor dear to me at the beginning of my career, wrote such a long and careful review of my work caused me profound joy.

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Gabriela Coronado Suzán et al., Porque hablar dos idiomas… es como saber más. Sistemas comunicativos bilingües ante el México Plural México, CIESAS/SEP/Conacyt, 1999. 327pp.

In Porque hablar dos idiomas… es como saber más. Sistemas comunicativos bilingües ante el México plural, Gabriela Coronado Suzán, together with a group of collaborators, evidences the magnitude and versatility of this problem of languages in contact which, in the Mexican linguistic reality, acquires peculiar and even unique distinctive traits.

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An educational experiment: Fresnillo’s School of Mining (1851-1860)

This work researches on the links there were between the economic development of the mining industry and the technical education encouraged in the mid XIX century. We shall address training at Fresnillo’s School of Mining, exemplary institution which allows us to analyze the gap between theoretical training and technical learning of mining engineers.

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Syncretism on trial. The religious matrix of the indigenous groups in Mesoamerica

Syncretism has often been defined as the integration or secondary construction of selective aspects that come from different historic traditions. The concept has been particularly relevant for Mexican anthropology, confronted since its origins to religious contexts in which it is difficult to distinguish between the vernacular field and the external field, between what comes from ancient Pre-Colombian traditions and what is a product of the colonial undertaking.

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A New Application for Linguistics: Logogenia

Logogenia is a method whose purpose is to stimulate the acquisition of Spanish, or of any other historic-vocal language, in deaf children and adolescents, allowing them to acquire the ability to understand what they read and to write correctly, in the same way any other hearing contemporary would. I have developed this method on the theoretical basis of generative grammar and I have experimented with, applied and made it known, first in Mexico and later in Italy.

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