When Napoleon IIIs French Army invades Mexico in 1862, so are the protagonists forced to protect and nourish themselves, excavate their true identity, and marry the paradoxical truths of past and present, masculine and feminine, lightness and darkness. Viola, a young mestizo woman, enslaved at the Hacienda Manzanilla is stifled by the oppression that envelops her in an economically and spiritually depleted Mexico post War of the Reform. A grief stricken and anxious Viola is fostered by the ancient wisdom of her grandfather, a Mayan elder who lives in a nearby indigenous village. Out of rhythm with society and her peers, Viola spends much of her time deep in contemplation either in nature or encapsulated in a world she must keep secrether world of literacy. Viola has been taught to read at a time when education is prohibited for a woman of her social orientation. When Viola meets Octavio, the son of a decorated, deceased war hero who is bequeathed the duty of a Zapotec warrior, her fortified existence is disrupted. Their divergent ideals mingle as tension and conflict from the imminent Battle of Puebla spirals around them. They are thrust into a multidimensional journey of discovery, forgiveness, healing, love, and transformation. Indigena is a timeless story of adversity and triumph, war and peace. Grounded in factual detail and effervescent with metaphor, this story of Cinco de Mayo fuses real life historical figures with palpable fictional characters to recount the Mexican peoples rise from the ashes of oppression.

Yucatán, 1847. La incipiente república mejicana está ocupada por tropas de la Unión Americana. Se inicia una ominosa guerra, la que pronto sería llamada "Guerra de castas". Tizimín, situado en las últimas fronteras de la civilización, una década atrás había padecido de asonadas de militares que pretendían separar a la península de Méjico. Desde 1812 la Nueva España habían derogado de facto las leyes de las Cortes de Cádiz, que otorgaban a los indígenas los mismos privilegios que gozaban los españoles. Los nuevos amos son ahora los criollos: hacendados, empresarios, militares, clérigos, y una pequeña burguesía, oprimieron los mayas y restauraron el feudalismo en la región. El levantamiento indígena resultante sería el más cruento que recuerde la historia del Continente. En aquel ambiente, un mozalbete de ambigua procedencia y trastornada personalidad, se involucra activamente en la contienda. La gente blanca del pueblo huye en urgida caravana hacia Mérida, ciudad blanca. En el trayecto, nuestro amigo va descubriendo la realidad de sus orígenes. Y todo parece haber cambiado para él. A la muerte de sus padres, su tía y el cura del pueblo ya se habían encargado de su educación. Un misterioso personaje aparece reiteradamente a suplantar su singular personalidad. Su fascinación por la aventura, la temprana avidez por el dinero, una innata empatía hacia los mayas, y sus relación con una jovencita indígena, le mueven a unirse a los alzados, al tiempo que sus nuevos preceptores le apoyan en su vocación a las letras. A cuatro décadas de la huída, Turix nos relata las peripecias de su vida, y nos da a conocer el intolerante ambiente de aquella época. "El escritor es un observador imparcial, no juez de sus personajes, o de las palabras que él pueda poner en su boca; aprende a alejarse de sí mismo y a mirarse sin complicidades. No resuelve problemas, sólo los plantea abiertamente", expresa en algún momento de su narrativa.

Word Mingas is an English-language translation by Paul M. Worley and Melissa Birkhofer of the award-winning book Mingas de la palabra written by Miguel Rocha Vivas (Casa de las Americas, 2016). It is an encompassing study of oralitures--multilayered cultural knowledge shared through the power of orality--and written literatures by authors from Colombia and other regions in the hemisphere who self-identify as Indigenous. In consequential dialogue with the most recent theories of decoloniality and interculturality, the book weaves and compares two threads of literary critique Rocha Vivas names as oralitegraphies and mirrored visions. The study focuses on texts produced from the early 1990s to the present, and offers productive avenues to discuss, understand, and foster dialogue with the wide array of symbolic-literary systems of the original peoples. Rocha Vivas offers a valuable contribution to the much-needed dialogue on the basic rights of self-representation, self-determination, and the coexistence of multiple systems of representation and identity.

This edited volume analyzes the belief in supernatural gamekeepers and/or animal masters of wildlife from a cross-cultural perspective. It documents the antiquity and widespread occurrence of the belief in supernatural gamekeepers at the global level. This interdisciplinary volume documents both the antiquity and the widespread geographical distribution of this belief along with surveying the various manifestations of this cosmology by way of studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Some chapters explore the manifestations of this belief as they appear in petroglyphs/pictographs and other forms of material culture. Others focus on the environmental impacts of these beliefs/rituals and prescribed foraging restrictions by analyzing how they affect game harvests. The internationally recognized scholars in this volume assess the efficacy of this particular form of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and investigate if adherence to the belief in animal masters actually causes hunters to refrain from overharvesting wild game and thereby contributes to sustainable hunting practices. This volume is of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists and other social scientists researching traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), indigenous conservation, biodiversity, and sustainability practices, and animal deities.