This article aims to analyze traces of Aztec cultural memory recorded in sixteenth-century cultural sources of Central Mexico. It is a study of the particular case of an Aztec hero named Tlacahuepan, whose glorious death was commemorated in many songs and chronicles. The texts in question reveal highly symbolic language, as well as clearly established narrative patterns. The study of their discursive tools can cast considerable light on the ideological background that underlies the oral tradition on which these stories have been based. It can also contribute to a better understanding of the methods and strategies employed by the Aztecs to memorize the past and explain the present.

This article examines the early history of the Hospital de San Hipólito in Mexico City, which delivered charitable care and basic medical services to a vulnerable category of colonial subjects known as “pobres dementes,” or mad paupers. In spite of the vast and robust literature on the history of madness and its institutions, surprisingly little is known about this institution, which, founded in 1567, holds a claim to being the first hospital of the Americas to specialize in the care and custody of the mentally disturbed. The article draws on archival sources and biographies of the hospital's founder to reconstruct San Hipólito's origins, activities, patient population, and interior life. It asks how the hospital registered the transfer and adaptation of institutions, ideas, and practices from the Old World to the New. It argues, ultimately, that San Hipólito served as an imperfect tool of colonial governance—and that it did so less through exerting control over a multiracial, recalcitrant, and marginal group of colonial society than through the reproduction of charitable practices and ideas that lent legitimacy to Catholicism and Hapsburg models of paternal authority.

Founded in 1947 by a Catholic priest, Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO) was a pioneer in radio education. Offering a radio station (Radio Sutatenza), study manuals, and a newspaper, ACPO provided basic education and encouraged campesinos to seek personal development and to “vivir mejor”--to live better. From 1947 to 1994, it attracted over four million subscribers and became a model in 13 Latin American countries. In this article I show how ACPO's approach to rural development and communication style evolved between 1960 and 1980. As a consequence of technological, economic, and cultural developments, Radio Sutatenza, a station with a more or less captive audience of illiterate peasants, changed as it was forced to respond to rural Colombians’ shifting aspirations and competition from commercial radio. While the organization's founding principles remained constant throughout this period, its articulation of what it meant to “live better” changed over time, reflecting the struggles of a religious organization to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. While ACPO saw itself as the bearer of modernity, it was often confronted by independent processes of change already occurring in rural communities.

The year 1976 was a violent one in Nicaragua. In an effort to quash the Sandinista guerrillas, the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle had declared a state of siege, suspending constitutional guarantees, muzzling the press, and unleashing the Guardia Nacional. Despite the dangers of dissent, thousands of students across the country walked off their secondary school campuses that year to protest poor funding, inept teachers, and oppressive administrators. This article examines this series of strikes to uncover the ways in which teenagers managed to organize their schools and communities in spite of the repression that marked the final years of the Somoza regime. Analyzing student documents, Ministry of Education records, and newspaper reports, this article argues that in the context of a decades-long dictatorship, student demands for more democratic schools opened a relatively safe pathway for cross-generational activism that forced concessions from the Somoza regime. By the 1970s, secondary schools had come to reflect the state's authoritarianism and mismanagement, and widespread educational deficiencies brought students and parents together in a joint project to demand better schools. Battles over the quality of education, thus, showcased the power of an organized citizenry and laid the groundwork for the revolutionary mobilizations that were to come.