The interview conceptualizes value sovereignty as the capacity of individuals, society, and the state to preserve the stability of their own value system, reproduce it across generations, and remain recognizable in dialogue with other cultures. Value sovereignty is broader than ideology: it concerns the foundations from which both ideology and culture emerge. Its core is intergenerational unity, understood as the ability of different generations to recognize in one another fundamental distinctions, even when the forms through which these distinctions are expressed change. Maintaining value sovereignty requires social technologies which, through the algorithmization and standardization of social activity, create conditions for the reproduction and intergenerational transmission of values while also making it possible to assess the effectiveness of public policy. In addition to traditional opinion surveys, values can now be studied through their digital traces in social media and with the help of neurotechnologies, including MRI and eye tracking. Value metrics could become a practical tool for evaluating public policy and, by measuring the overlap between value patterns across countries, for assessing the feasibility of integration projects and improving the effectiveness of international policy. Value sovereignty exists where society and the state are capable of ensuring it. For postcolonial societies, including those of Latin America and the Caribbean, this task is particularly complex: formal independence does not always mean overcoming symbolic and value dependence. Historical and cultural memory are key mechanisms for the intergenerational transmission of a value system: through memory, society transmits not only knowledge about the past but also ideas of justice, dignity, heroism, and duty. Political independence becomes stable only when society understands which values it regards as its own. At the same time, memory is also directed toward the future. Value sovereignty may be compared to a native language: it changes and borrows, yet remains one’s own as long as its inner structure is still felt.

Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816) was the first South American to become fully aware of the oppression that Spanish America endured, as well as the right of its inhabitants to a distinct identity and to pursue their own historical, political, and economic destiny—all of which had been continuously violated by the Spanish Crown since 1492. As a pioneer, he designed the first liberation projects for the continent and coined the name for the new nation: Colombia. This nation was to be born once the Crown’s armies were expelled from South American soil, an endeavor for which he organized the first liberating expedition and conceived political organization models that would later be implemented by the future liberators of Our America. His participation between 1781 and 1783 as a soldier of the Spanish Empire in the North American Wars of Independence forced him into a deep self-confrontation. This led to his decision to desert and dedicate the rest of his life to achieving the liberation of South America. To accomplish this, he focused on seeking governance models that would ensure the happiness of the people, alongside the necessary financing to organize a Liberating Expedition. With these goals in mind, he traveled across almost all of Europe and parts of Asia without finding any support for his liberating project, until he landed in Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great. She became the first ruler to understand and morally and financially support the political and military project of Miranda, the first liberator of South America, named by him as Colombia. Furthermore, Miranda recorded everything he experienced in a personal diary, preserving—alongside his own notes—every official, journalistic, or personal document he deemed relevant to that liberation project. Today, this collection constitutes the Archive of General Miranda, which has been declared a Memory of the World by UNESCO.

The article analyzes the piligrimage diary of the Sevillian aristocrat Fadrique Enriquez de Ribera, Marquis of Tarifa (1476-1539), who travelled to Jerusalem between 1518 and 1520. The different stages of the journey – Spain, France, Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean – are described unevenly and with varying degrees of detail. The study focuses on those parts of the journey that were of greatest interest to Don Fadrique and that allowed him to determine the route and duration of his stays independently. From this perspective, particular attention is given to Italy, where the breadth of the Marquis’s interests becomes evident. An analysis of the diary highlights the importance the author attached to descriptions of city fortifications, hospitals, the political organization of urban republics, the Order of the Hospitallers on Rhodes, Carthusian monasteries and funerary monuments. All these interests are explained either by the author’s social status as an aristocrat and knight or by the specific aims he set for his journey. At the same time, the diary shows that in his aesthetic preferences the Marquis of Tarifa remained more a man of the Middle Ages than of the Renaissance.

He rarely refers to classical antiquities, seldom mentions Renaissance buildings and never notes their novelty in comparison with medieval ones. Nevertheless, the reconstruction of his palace (the Casa de Pilatos) and the creation of a funerary chapel for his ancestors, which he undertook in Seville after returning from his travel, demonstrate a clear influence of Renaissance architecture and sculpture in its northern Italian version. The palace and the chapel became the first Renaissance buildings in Seville and played an important role in the development of the Spanish Renaissance.

The interest of Latin American public opinion in the Russian Revolution and the Land of the Soviets gave rise to a substantial body of travel writing about the USSR, both translated and created by Latin American authors themselves, —writers, journalists and public figures who undertook journeys to a distant country, which was always fraught with considerable difficulties. This literature on the USSR formed an important part of the political and humanitarian influence exerted by «new Russia» on Latin American societies. Argentina, one of the most developed countries of the continent and a major cultural center, produced the largest number of «travelers» to the Soviet Union during the interwar period. The article examines the works of Argentine authors who visited Russia and analyzes the extent to which their view of Soviet reality in the 1920s and 1930s was original, unbiased and frank; it also considers whether their perspective reflected reality itself or rather their expectations and preconceived ideas about what they hoped to see. The central issue is not so much the observer’s degree of objectivity as the way Soviet reality was refracted through images and representations shaped by a different national and cultural environment, and the extent to which political bias could affect the credibility of these travel accounts. For the first time in Russian historiography, this study offers such an analysis and introduces into scholarly circulation documents from Russian archives related to the subject.

This article examines the relationships established between left-wing organizations active throughout the 1960s and 1970s on both sides of the Atlantic: the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores – Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (PRT-ERP) and the Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado – Brigadas Revolucionárias (PRP-BR). The trip to Lisbon, in March 1975, of a delegation of Argentine militants serves as the guiding thread that allows us, throughout the text, to analyze the political horizons and objectives that fostered the creation of material and symbolic connections among activists operating in different contexts across Europe and Latin America. In this sense, we argue that exchanges among these actors encouraged significant transformations in their viewpoints and in their analyses of the international revolutionary context, and consequently helped shape their political practices on the ground. Finally, by shedding light on an experience that has been largely unexplored in the historiography, the article highlights the depth and multidirectional character of the transnational connections that contributed to shaping the emancipatory projects that emerged throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

The article deals with the question of instrumentalization of history in modern politics of the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan. The vast majority of modern states implement, in distinct forms and by different means, various actions that can be comprehended in the frame of memory politics. The latter is a complex of governmental measures, the objective of which is to implement a perspective of historical progress in a given society and its specific narrative. All of the above can be instrumentalized with political goals. Considering the prominent importance of historical narratives for legitimation of center-left Morena party power, led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which governs Mexico since the elections of 2018, it seems pertinent to analyze the influence of new narratives in the case of the state of Yucatan. This state, being a long-term and traditional bulwark of Mexican right-wing politicians, and characterized by a high proportion of native Maya population, is governed, since 2024 elections, by morenista governor J. Diaz Mena. Following the president’s example, he has begun to use the history and historical references in his public discourse. The study centers on the figure of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, state governor in 1922-1924, commemorative practices dedicated to him, and exploitation of his image in legitimation of Diaz Mena’s government. In contrast with official discourse this article proposes a brief review of collective memories from below, frequently in conflict with governmental perspective. This article shows the reproduction at local level of legitimizing practices based on symbolic and ideological heritage of the heroes of the past, whose legacy is carried on by the present governor.

This article examines the relationship between documentary photography and criollo music practices in Lima, proposing the photo essay as an analytical tool for understanding the jarana as a living urban practice shaped by collective interaction, performance, and shared musical practices. Drawing on visual anthropology, performance studies, and image theory, photography is approached not only as a means of documentation, but also as a form of knowledge production about popular culture. The research takes La Catedral del Criollismo — a community-based musical space located in the district of Breña — as its ethnographic core, where musical practice organizes affective ties, intergenerational participation, and ritualized forms of interaction. Building from this fieldwork, the article analyzes two photo essays developed across different criollo spaces in Lima — El jardín de los autores. Dulce veneno del valse (2015) and A la limeña. Encanto de jarana (2017) — in order to explore the performative and relational dimensions of contemporary criollismo in the Peruvian capital. Rather than understanding photography as a merely representational device, the article argues that the photo essay enables a slower and more attentive reading of musical performance, revealing gestures, hierarchies, and forms of collective interaction that often become diluted within digital circulation. In this sense, the study proposes the photo essay as a methodological contribution to the study of urban popular culture in Latin American contexts, shifting the focus from heritage-based understandings of criollismo toward its everyday forms of social interaction and cultural continuity.

This research article conducts a comprehensive analysis of the markers of national identity in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel «One Hundred Years of Solitude». The primary objective is to identify and interpret the linguistic and cultural parameters that shape the artistic embodiment of Colombian and, more broadly, Latin American identity. The methodological framework is based on linguocultural commentary, textuality analysis, and the examination of the interaction between semiotic components. The study systematizes key markers representing the hybrid nature of Colombian society: autochthonous lexemes from Wayuu, Nahuatl, and Taíno languages; anthroponyms and toponyms; religious and expressive vocabulary; phraseology; and symbolic imagery. Particular attention is paid to the role of the Colombian national variant of the Spanish language, including the use of regionalisms and Anglicisms. The study’s scholarly contribution lies in interpreting the novel as a linguocultural code where the dialectical interaction of historical memory, cultural synthesis, and linguistic diversity constructs a unique model of «Colombianness». The research demonstrates that the fictional space of Macondo serves as a microcosm accumulating collective experience and ethno-cultural stereotypes. The identified markers — ranging from historical and political allusions to linguistic peculiarities and cultural symbols — function not merely as cultural realia but as profound symbols organizing the novel’s artistic space. The findings contribute to philological and cultural studies by proposing a systematic approach to the analysis of Latin American literary text through the lens of identity. The study demonstrates that «One Hundred Years of Solitude» can be understood as an artistic model of Colombian identity, in which the macrocosm of national history is concentrated within the microcosm of Macondo.

Book review: Kofman A.F. Praying to God, Striking with Sword: the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. The View of the Victors and the Vanquished. Hernán Cortés and Others. Text Andrei F. Kofman.- Saint Petersburg, Kriga, 2025 (In Russian).-632p.

In 2025, the Saint Petersburg Publishing House Kriga released the final book by the distinguished Russian historian Andrei Kofman: Praying to God, Striking with Sword: the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. The view of the Victors and the Vanquished. Hernán Cortés and Others. Published after the author’s death, this work continues the series of his studies on the Spanish conquest of the territories of future Latin America and Southwestern United States in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Like his earlier books on the rebellion of Lope de Aguirre and the conquest of Peru, the work is not a monography but a collection of primary sources translated by Kofman from Spanish into Russian. It should be emphasized that A.F. Kofman was the first Russian specialist in Latin American studies to translate and publish in full the Second and the Third Letters of Relation by Hernan Cortes to the Emperor Charles V, the accounts of the conquistadors Andrés de Tapia, Bernadino Vázquez de Tapia and fray Francisco de Aguilar, as well as the instructions of Diego Velázquez to Hernán Cortés. This alone represents an important scholarly achievement. At the same time, the book is not merely an anthology of sources on the conquest of Mexico, but an ambitious attempt to use these texts to create a complex and multidimensional picture of one of the pivotal events in Latin American history.

On the eve of the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, interest in the events of 1936–1939 has noticeably intensified in Russia, which has been reflected in the publication of several translated works devoted to this subject. These books primarily focus lies on issues of historical memory and attitudes toward the past. The work of Paul Preston «Spain in Flames» enables readers not only to become acquainted with the basic chronology of those events, but also to engage with historiographical debates concerning the causes of the conflict, foreign intervention, and the scale of repression. Fiction literature, in turn, allows Russian readers to engage more deeply with the emotional experiences that the memory of the Civil War evokes in Spanish society. In the novels of Javier Cercas, Paloma Sánchez-Garnica, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and María Zaragoza, the conflict is portrayed through the lives of ordinary people who endured violence, exile, fear, and the destruction of their familiar world. A common feature of these works is their effort to preserve the memory of the defeated, the exiles, and the victims of repression, whose experiences remained marginalized within the official historical narrative for decades. Contemporary literature on the Spanish Civil War performs not only an artistic but also an important social function, serving as a means of reflecting on historical trauma and resisting oblivion.