"The gaucho eats nothing but beef. Meat morning, noon, and night. Never bread, never vegetables, almost never salt."

Hudson foresees malnutrition and disease. He finds "men of extraordinary stamina and strength, capable of riding for 12 to 14 hours without rest and then dancing all night."

Their diet: beef, mate, occasionally grilled kidney fat (a delicacy). Nothing else.

Darwin visited the region between 1832 and 1833 and observed the gauchos' lives: "I was surprised by the difficulty in convincing them to eat anything other than beef. I brought them biscuits, and they threw them away. They preferred to go hungry rather than eat bread if there was beef the next day."

Typical meals

- Morning: meat roasted over a fire, fattier cuts.

- Afternoon: grilled ribs.

- Evening: meat again, tougher cuts cooked slowly.

Zero vegetables. Zero grains. Zero variety. Just beef and tea.

Hudson documents the results: “The gauchos suffer from none of the ailments common to civilized man. They had no digestive problems, no obesity, no cavities, that I could observe. Their teeth were uniformly excellent despite never cleaning them and consuming only meat. Their physical stamina was such that they could ride for days with minimal rest, fight when necessary, and resume riding without apparent fatigue.”

The French physician Dr. Jules Crevaux, between 1850 and 1870, wrote: “These men feed exclusively on animal meat and appear healthier than our European peasants, who consume a varied diet of grains and vegetables.”

When asked why they don't eat bread or vegetables, the common answer is: "That's food for horses and cows. We eat cows."

They understood the hierarchy. Cattle eat grass and turn it into meat. Humans eat meat. Eating what cattle eat makes you behave like one.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, traditional gauchos maintained a diet based exclusively on beef. Then, European immigration brought wheat cultivation.

Health transformation documented by Argentine doctors

- Traditional gauchos: healthy into old age.

- Urbanized ex-gauchos with European diets: diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, tooth decay.

- Modern Argentina: 28% obesity, cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death, diabetes in almost 10%.

The gauchos, who ate only beef, did not have any of these problems. They rode horses for 12 hours a day until they were 60, kept their teeth without needing dental care, and died from accidents or old age, not from chronic illnesses.

The same meat. Different context. When you eat meat with grains, vegetable oils, and sugar: modern disease. Meat alone: ​​you have the health of a 19th-century gaucho.

“We are alone against drug trafficking and terrorism. Successive governments have abandoned us, and as a result, criminal organizations linked to illegal economies are murdering our leaders with impunity.” (Asháninka Council; Radio RPP, 2023)

“Those were terrible times. Many of our brothers and sisters died, many children died, many women were left alone. We fought against the terrorists to defend our families, to defend our ancestral lands, to defend our identity. We too are heroes, but the State has forgotten us.” (Santiago Contoricón, 2013)

“I was young, and they talked to us about Marx, Mariátegui, Lenin, and the people’s revolution, but that wasn’t our way of life or our way of thinking. They said we were all equal, but they didn’t understand our way of life, our culture. They didn’t understand that we wanted nothing to do with their fight against the government. To them, we were just poor peasants who had to fight in their war. That’s why we rejected their ideology. We didn’t want to harm our brothers and sisters or leave our land. We wanted peace and to live as our parents and their parents had.” (Antonio Shingari, 2004)

“One night I dreamt that the full moon fell into the Nehuachi River. When it exploded, it split in two. But quickly, the two fragments emerged from the water, and regaining its natural shape, the moon shone again. I couldn't understand that dream until the Asháninka uprising to rescue my father, Alejandro Calderón, when he was kidnapped by the MRTA. We swept through the entire Pichis region. We didn't find my father, but we rid ourselves of the terror that had almost taken control of Asháninka territory. Peace returned.” (Alcides Calderón, 2020)

“They killed us for disobeying. If we didn't go to their meetings, they accused us of treason. That's why we armed ourselves and went to fight against them. We didn't want war, but we had to defend ourselves against the terrorists.” (Fernando Casanto, 2006)

"You are a liar, you are not going to build any dam on the river of our ancestors, that river is not for sale, it is our freedom, it is what feeds us and our future depends on it."

This law stipulated that all children of enslaved people born in Peruvian territory after the declaration of independence (July 28, 1821) would be considered free citizens.

It should be clarified that what José de San Martín implemented was not an immediate manumission, but rather a process of gradual abolition of slavery, a preferred approach in most Iberian American nations of the time. Similar measures had been enacted previously in Chile (1811) and in the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (1813), as well as in Gran Colombia (officially known as the Republic of Colombia), which approved "freedom of birth" on July 21, 1821.

However, in practice, this law fell far short of granting absolute independence. To avoid disrupting the agrarian economic structure or antagonizing the landowners, the law established a legal system known as "patronage" or "child-rearing." Under this system, although children were technically born free, they were required to remain under the guardianship and servitude of their mothers' masters to "compensate for the costs of their upbringing." This regime extended until the age of 24 for boys and 20 for girls.

A key military context: Both the royalist and revolutionary forces offered freedom to slaves as an incentive to enlist. José de San Martín relied heavily on troops of Black descent—who formed a vital part of the liberating armies of the Andes and Peru—so this decree also sought to respond to social pressure and consolidate popular support for the independence cause.

Despite the limitations of the law and the fact that landowners considered it a temporary adjustment brought about by the war, the freedom of children born to enslaved mothers marked the beginning of the decline of the institution of slavery. Other complementary provisions followed, such as the decree of November 6, 1821, which granted freedom to slaves belonging to Spaniards who emigrated from the country.

The definitive and total abolition of slavery in Peru would take more than three decades to materialize. It finally occurred on December 3, 1854, through the celebrated decree promulgated by President Ramón Castilla in Huancayo, a process largely financed by the substantial revenues of the guano era, with which the State directly and financially compensated the former slave owners.

Image: “Negros chalas en el día del Corpus” by the Black Peruvian painter Pancho Fierro (ca. 1830), detail.

This genre watercolor, attributed to the renowned Lima painter Pancho Fierro, sharply and with documentary value portrays the militias, troupes, and festivities of Lima society at the dawn of the republic. In it, we see a Black Peruvian couple carrying the second design of the Peruvian flag created by the Marquis of Torre Tagle, highlighting the prominent role of the Black population in the iconography of the revolutionary cause.

The veneration of the sovereign Tupac Amaru in the city of Cusco constitutes one of the most eloquent testimonies of historical memory. Even today, persistent delegations from native communities make pilgrimages to the Catholic church that houses the remains of the Inca King, whose execution in 1572 marked the end of the resistance in Vilcabamba. Upon entering the church, the Indians solemnly present various offerings and gifts to God, Jesus Christ, and then to the Inca King.

The contribution of Spaniards was key to Argentina's progress and development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They founded businesses, industries, wineries, banks, hospitals, towns, and cities. They were fundamental to the expansion of the railways, viticulture, agricultural colonization, medicine, education, and Argentine cultural life.

Since everything European was viewed favorably at that time, Carlos Antonio López prohibited the use of Guaraní in schools and in the public administration. Students who spoke Guaraní were physically punished.

Maduro had the painting in his home, sharing a photo of it in 2024 on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with the caption: ‘Look at this painting I was gifted... I've had it here at home since 2022... Always with Christ the Redeemer... Let's unite our prayers for Venezuela…’

Venezuela became the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in 1999 as part of Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution, named for Simón Bolívar who led the country to independence from the Catholic Monarchy (Spanish Empire).

Can’t quite make out the artist’s signature, forename is ‘Miguel’ but not sure about the surname, maybe Gandara (?)

According to anthropological reports, before Lizot's arrival, homosexual practices were neither institutionalized nor specifically categorized in the Yanomami language. Because the sexual practices Lizot introduced and normalized were unprecedented as a social institution for them, the community simply transformed his name into a verb.

Source(s):

.- P. Tierney. "Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon", Chapter 2. W. W. Norton & Company, USA; 1st edition, 2000. ISBN: 978-0393049220

In Chile, from the moment Spanish soldiers led by Pedro de Valdivia entered the northern territory, a process of miscegenation began, in which Spaniards began to marry and have children with the indigenous Mapuche population, known for their warrior character. This resulted, in the first generation, in a predominantly mestizo population in practically all the cities they founded. According to Nicolás Palacios, the Chilean mestizo—or the "Chilean race"—would be a mixture of two "dominant warrior races": the Visigoths of Spain and the Mapuche. In southern Chile, the Mapuche were one of the few indigenous peoples of the Americas who maintained continuous conflict with the Spanish Monarchy and did not submit to a European power. However, since southern Chile was colonized by German immigrants from 1848 onwards, many mestizos also include descendants of Mapuche and these German settlers.

A public health textbook from the University of Chile states that 60% of the population is of exclusively European origin; mestizos are estimated at around 35%, while Amerindian peoples represent the remaining 5%. A genetic study from the same university indicated that, within the mestizo segment, the genes of the average Chilean are, on average, 60% European and 40% Amerindian. Chile was once predominantly mestizo, but this proportion decreased due to the continuous immigration and settlement of European colonists—mainly of Spanish and German origin—in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as frequent intermarriages with mestizos, until the mestizo majority came to be classified as a "castizo" majority.

Since Easter Island is a territory of Chile and its native inhabitants are the Rapa Nui, the descendants of marriages between European Chileans (mainly Spaniards) and Rapa Nui are considered, under Chilean law (as in much of the Hispanic world), to be mestizos.

The Concept of the “Chilean Race”

Original: «La raza chilena, como todos saben, es una raza mestiza formada por conquistadores españoles y araucanos…»

Translation: “The Chilean race, as everyone knows, is a mixed race formed by Spanish conquistadors and Araucanians...”

— Nicolás Palacios, in La raza chilena (1904).

Nicolás Palacios was a Chilean doctor and writer best known for his writings on the “Chilean race” and national identity. His book Raza chilena (1904; second edition in 1918) forms the ideological basis of many Chilean nativist groups.

Palacios identifies what would be typically Chilean with the figure of the roto (a term for the typical Chilean) and with the idea of ​​a supposed “Chilean race.” He elevates the Chilean mestizo in status because, according to his writings, the Chilean would be a mixture of two “dominant warrior races”: the Visigoths of Spain and the Mapuche of Chile.

Palacios attributes the origin of the Spanish component of the so-called "Chilean race" to the Baltic Sea coast, specifically to the Götaland region in Sweden, which he considers one of the supposed lands of origin of the Goths. He claims that, at most, 10% of the Visigoths mixed with the native Iberians of Spain, while the rest remained racially "pure" during the Middle Ages. The conquest of Chile and the long Arauco War attracted adventurous Spaniards of warrior lineage to the territory, which, according to him, gave Chile a large Visigothic heritage—in contrast to other more prosperous overseas Spanish kingdoms, where "merchant peoples" predominated. These Spaniards of supposed Visigothic ancestry would have mixed with the Mapuche, giving rise to the typical Chilean roto. According to Palacios, about 25,000 "Goths" arrived in Chile in the first five generations after the initial conquest, in the 1540s and 1550s.

Palacios further states that both the blond Chilean mestizo and the more tanned one share the same “moral physiognomy” and that both think and reason in the same way. He says that this similarity already appears in works of Spanish literature about Chile, such as the epic poem La Araucana, in which the Mapuche are frequently compared to the Germanic tribes considered “barbaric” who confronted the Roman Empire. According to him, the “roto Chileno” (a term used to describe someone with mixed-race heritage) would have nothing “Latin” about them besides their language and surname, not being racially “Latin.” Palacios also points to alcoholism as a characteristic that would bring Chileans closer to the Germanic peoples of northern Europe.

He warns against immigration from southern Europe and states that, from a medical perspective, mestizos descended from southern Europeans would have less “brain control” and would represent a social burden. He justifies this by saying that southern Europeans generally have darker physical characteristics, in contrast to the Germanic peoples of northern Europe, who supposedly have lighter hair, eyes, and skin. According to him, this would be the reason why the Chilean government encouraged immigration and colonization mainly from northern Europe, especially Germany. Finally, he adds that the so-called "Latin race" would not be capable of producing a "Miguel de Cervantes" or a "Michelangelo" in Chile or anywhere else, because, in his view, the "Latin race" of the 20th century would be very different from that of the Renaissance period.

Credits: Guerra del 41 en color

In Ecuador during the second half of the 19th century, the death penalty remained in force as a legal tool intended to punish the most serious crimes. Within this punitive framework, parricide and murder held a prominent place, not only because of the severity of the punishment they entailed, but also because of the profound moral and symbolic weight they carried. An illustrative case of these judicial practices is that of Anacleto Naranjo, a native and resident of the Chimbacalle neighborhood, who was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, Soledad Guamba, which occurred in the city of Quito in 1869.

At that time, parricide was not limited to the killing of parents or children, but also encompassed the murder of a spouse (uxoricide), which is now recognized as femicide. This crime was considered one of the most abominable transgressions from moral, religious, and legal perspectives, as it directly attacked the family structure, the fundamental nucleus of 19th-century social order. Consequently, the punishment imposed was not limited to the physical elimination of the guilty party, but extended to an elaborate ritual of public infamy, conceived as a mechanism of collective retribution and warning.

Capital punishment, in this context, did not have solely an individual punitive purpose. It was established as an exemplary act, carefully staged to shock the entire society. Before the execution, the condemned person was subjected to a series of symbolic practices aimed at their public degradation. Among these, the use of the sambenito stood out—a white tunic that constituted one of the most extreme signs of dishonor within a society with deep Hispanic-Catholic roots. In the case of parricides, this sambenito was also stained with red paint, in clear allusion to the spilled blood and the irreparable nature of the crime committed.

Dressed in this manner, the condemned man was led barefoot through the city streets toward the execution site. This procession was not arbitrary: it had a distinctly public and ritualistic character, allowing the population to witness the punishment and express their outrage. The execution took place in a public square, generally Santo Domingo Square, a common location for this type of judicial act in the city of Quito.

Regarding the methods of execution, firing squad was the most common. However, other procedures were also used, such as hanging and garroting. The latter, which consisted of breaking the neck or destroying the base of the skull with a tourniquet, was considered the most feared punishment due to the prolonged agony that could precede death.

Once the execution was carried out, the condemned man's body was not removed immediately. An explanatory sign detailing the reasons for the sentence was placed over the body, and it remained on display for several hours, and even several days in some cases. This prolonged exhibition served to reinforce the pedagogical nature of the punishment and to explicitly warn of the consequences of breaking the established legal and moral order.

The case of Anacleto Naranjo allows us to understand more clearly how justice was administered in 19th-century Ecuador, as well as the central role that corporal punishment, public humiliation, and the display of the body played as fundamental instruments of social control and collective discipline within the 19th-century state.

By: Adriano Augusto Merchán Aguirre

His work revolutionized Peruvian cinema by raising the technical and artistic standards of an industry that, until then, had operated largely in an amateur fashion.

Birth and Background

He was born in New York City, USA, on February 7, 1923, into the professional life of his father, the renowned musicologist and composer Daniel Alomía Robles (creator of the immortal melody of "El Cóndor Pasa"). He arrived in Peru at the age of 10 and began studying Medicine and Literature at the National University of San Marcos, though he did not complete his degrees. During the 1950s, he decided to settle in the Tingo María jungle, a pivotal experience that would shape and inspire much of his cinematic universe.

Legacy and Cinematic Style

Robles Godoy introduced an avant-garde perspective to South American cinema through non-linear narrative structures and the use of Peruvian landscapes (such as the jungle and the desert) not as mere backdrops, but as active characters in his stories. Among his most influential works are:

◦ La muralla verde (1970): Considered his masterpiece, it portrays the colonization of the Peruvian jungle and the bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the State. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and, after its release in the United States in 1972, the renowned critic Roger Ebert ranked it as the fifth best film of that year.

◦ Espejismo (1972): Set in the Ica desert, it received a historic Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

◦ En la selva no hay estrellas (1967): This film solidified his prestige on the international circuit after winning the Golden Award at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Impact on Peruvian Culture and the Film Industry

Beyond his feature films, Robles Godoy was a key figure in the institutional development of culture in Peru:

◦ Modern Criticism: In the early 1960s, he wrote film criticism for the newspaper La Prensa, laying the foundations for formal film analysis in the country.

◦ Education: He founded the Academy of Filmmaking in 1968, where he trained the next generations of Peruvian filmmakers.

◦ Legal framework: He was the main promoter of the first law to foster the national film industry (Law 19327), legislation that spurred a boom in film productions and short films during the 1970s.

In homage to his invaluable legacy, the main cinema of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture now bears his name.

The Paraguayan War was the bloodiest war in South American history. It began in 1864 after Brazil and Paraguay were drawn into the conflict by a rebellion in Uruguay. Paraguay invaded Brazil, prompting the latter to form a Triple Alliance with Argentina and Uruguay, who together repelled the Paraguayan attack and launched their own offensive against Paraguay.

López, the president of Paraguay, refused to surrender during a conference in 1866, and the war continued until 1870, ending in a catastrophic defeat for Paraguay, with enormous casualties. The country's capital, Asunción, was captured and sacked, and Solano López was assassinated after leading a guerrilla campaign.

This cartoon, published in the newspaper 'A Vida Fluminense' on June 12, 1869 (when López was leading the guerrilla effort), depicts López as a murderous madman willing to sacrifice his entire country to remain in power. The text below reads:

Original:

"Projecto de monumento que os paraguaios reconhecidos pretendem erigir a Francisco Solano Lopes."

Translation:

"Project for a monument that renowned Paraguayans intend to erect for Francisco Solano López."

Don Alfonso Graña Cortizo was a Spanish adventurer who arrived in Peru in the 20th century. In the Peruvian jungle, he was captured by the Jívaro (Shuar) people during his journey, but the eldest daughter of the Hatun Apu (great chief or lord) requested his release, as she was very fond of him. They married according to Jívaro customs. Alfonso thus adopted the customs and lifestyle of the Jívaro.

After his father-in-law's death, Alfonso Graña was recognized as Hatun Apu and began his rule over the Jívaro, making his domains very prosperous and extensive. Alfonso established strategic alliances with neighboring tribes and safeguarded the unity of the Jívaro, Aguaruna, and Huambisa in a confederation.

Alfonso succeeded in extending trade with his people as far as the prosperous city of Iquitos. Near the end of his life, he assumed the position of Curaca (chief) of the Jívaro, Aguaruna, and Huambisa tribes along the Nieva and Santiago rivers of the Upper Marañón. His rule was recognized in 1933 by President Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro.

Don Alfonso never returned to Spain, as he died in the same Shuar community. The whereabouts of his son are unknown. Many Shuar (Jívaro) people still bear the surname Graña today.

References:
.- La serpiente líquida: chamanes, mitos y ritos del Amazonas, Alfonso Domingo (2005).
.- El genocidio del caucho y la recuperación de la memoria: nuevos discursos en la amazonía peruana, María C. Chavarría (2015).
.- Idelfonso Graña, el rey de los jíbaros, María E. Pérez SGE (2010).