Cuando aparece el cuerpo decapitado de un joven ingeniero en computacion en las vias del ferrocarril en Monterrey, Mexico, el Capitan Guillermo Lombardo encuentra que su investigacion le conduce al mundo de los carteles de las drogas mexicanos. Ya que todo el mundo, desde el rector de la universidad hasta el gobernador del estado, rehusa cooperar con la investigacion, Lombardo pronto descubre que el cuerpo es solamente la punta de un enorme tempano de hielo que apunta a una situacion mucho mas importante.

Letras y Limpias is the first book to explore the literary significance of the figure of the curandera within Mexican American literature. Amanda Ellis traces the significance of the curandera and her evolution across a variety of genres written by leading Mexican American authors, including Américo Paredes, Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Manuel Munoz, ire’ne lara silva, and more. Ellis explores the curandera in relationship to decoloniality, bioethics, and the topic of healing while recognizing the limitations and spiritual shortcomings of Western medicine. Ellis argues that our contemporary western health-care system does not know how to fully grapple with illnesses that patients face. Ellis reads the curandera’s perennial representation as an ongoing example of decolonial love useful for deconstructing narrow definitions of health and personhood, and for grappling with the effects of neoliberalism and colonialism on the health-care industry. Letras y Limpias draws from Chicana feminist theory to assert the importance of the mindbodyspirit connection. Ellis conveys theoretical insights about the continual reimagining of the figure of the curandera as a watermark across Mexican American literary texts. This literary figure points to the oppressive forces that create susto and reminds us that healing work requires specific attention to colonialism, its legacy, and an intentional choice to carry forward the traditional practices rooted in curanderismo passed on from prior generations. By turning toward the figure of the curandera, readers are better poised to challenge prevailing ideas about health, and imagine ways to confront the ongoing problems that coloniality creates. Letras y Limpias shows how the figure of the curandera offers us ways to heal that have nothing to do with copays or medical professionals refusing care, and everything to do with honoring the beauty and complexity of any, every, and all humans.

Letras y Limpias is the first book to explore the literary significance of the curandera. It offers critical new insights about how traditional medicine and folk healing underwrite Mexican American literature. Amanda Ellis traces the significance of the curandera and her evolution across a variety of genres written by Mexican American authors such as Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Manuel Munoz, ire'ne lara silva, and more.

El Bailío Gran Prior Fray Gian Galeazzo Ruspoli, percibe la visión de un Ángel que le comunica que la Orden de San Juan a la que pertenece necesita de sus servicios como monje guerrero e investigador en el futuro. Sorprendido ante esta petición, no puede evitar que la curiosidad se adueñe de él. El Ángel le cuenta entonces la historia de la Orden de Malta y sus cinco siglos de lucha encarnizada contra el Islam. La Orden había olvidado por completo su faceta militar y se había centrado desde entonces en sus obras hospitalarias, religiosas y culturales. Se encuentra inerme en una complicada trama que podría acabar con la vida de algunos de sus ilustres caballeros profesos investigadores de la historia de Jesús y minar hasta la misma Iglesia. Gian Galeazzo acepta el reto y se ve al instante proyectado hacia el año 2.000, ocho siglos después de la época en la le tocó vivir. Este es el marco donde se desarrollará la labor de Fray Gian Galeazzo quien deberá aportar todas sus virtudes y habilidades para evitar un desenlace trágico. ¿Logrará llevar a cabo su misión celestial? ¿Cambiará la investigación la historia de la Iglesia Católica? La saga de El Profeso está compuesta de momento por: El Profeso, Asesinato en el Letrán, Muerte de Profesos, El Profeso en Tíbet y, en preparación: El Profeso y el diablo. El protagonista Gian Galeazzo está inspirado en la extraordinaria figura de Galeazzo Marescotti, héroe de Bolonia y absolutamente retratada en otra de sus novelas históricas, titulada: El Confaloniero.

Presenting and interrogating an array of texts and discourses, this collection brings into focus a broad range of topics whose common denominator is the intersection between cultural productions and politics in different moments of the history of Latin America and Spain. From the struggles of class distinction, identity and community in 19th and 20th century and contemporary Latin America as explored in photography, literature and film, to how political and sexual transgressions from medieval times to the present are portrayed in Hispanic literature, and the ways that canonical and non-canonical texts in Spain have been defying hegemonic power relations in the 20th century and beyond. This volume provides fresh approaches from well-established scholars, as well as from a new generation of researchers whose works enlighten the reader about the rich facets of such intersections. This publication also offers a background to pursue further research in these areas and to serve the general public interested in Latin American and Spanish literary and cultural studies, and those seeking a greater understanding of social and economic change in both Latin America and Spain: specifically, issues of inclusion and citizenship; the constraints on state power in the neoliberal era; the strategies used by texts to create subjects that are not bound to conventional identity formations; and the challenges and possibilities of subverting the gaze of the institutional spectator.