La Colmena

Carta editorial

Valerin Romero, Valentina Huaroc — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

The two faces of a city: Planning and urban segregation in the Monserrate neighborhood

Emil Faryd Grijalva Flores — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This essay makes a critical analysis of the management of the Historic Center of Lima (CHL) through the Management of Planning, Management and Recovery of the Historic Center of Lima (PROLIMA) and its impact on urban segregation. It explores how policies focused on heritage conservation and tourism have led to an unequal distribution of attention and resources among the neighborhoods of the CHL, with special emphasis on the case of the Monserrate neighborhood. Despite its historical and cultural richness, Monserrate has been marginalized in terms of municipal investment and attention, resulting in significant deterioration of its infrastructure and high vulnerability to natural disasters. This essay reveals that PROLIMA’s interventions prioritize areas with greater tourism potential, leaving Monserrate and other similar neighborhoods in a state of neglect. This inaction is categorized as segregation by default, a perspective that explains how the deliberate or negligent omission of inclusive policies perpetuates the exclusion and marginalization of certain neighborhoods. The essay concludes that urban policies in Lima’s Historic Center have favored the restoration of monuments and cultural tourism, relegating neighborhoods such as Monserrate and perpetuating socio-spatial segregation. The effectiveness of the Master Plan for the Historic Center of Lima (PMCHL) is questioned due to the lack of citizen participation, which has disconnected urban policies from everyday realities. In addition, neighborhood resistance in Monserrate is highlighted as a response to municipal negligence and exclusion, highlighting the residential character that this area still possesses.

Representation of the 1940-60’s Lima city from the point of view of criticism in the literature of Julio Ramón Ribeyro and Enrique Congrains and its scope in the 21st century

Pablo Martin Medina Paipay — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Cities, just as living organisms, are entities of change and evolution. They change according to time, context and its inhabitants (Jacobs, 1961). This way, it can be stated that Lima city has undergone several transformation processes throughout its history. All of them started with different society-changing factors: population growth, migrations, economic crisis, social movements, labor supply and demand, and others. Particularly, the 20th century was determined by the large number of migration processes and its consequences in urban development. Therefore, it was the time period where most changes occurred in Lima city (Calderón, 2003; Matos, 1984). In this precise context, the 50’s generation, a literary movement characterized by the use of urban neorealism, establishes and develops its literary criticism of Lima city: a hostile and chaotic town that has its foundation in a social hierarchy which determines development factors that led to a low level of living quality and discrimination. This research focuses on analyzing the social criticism developed in two of the most important exponents of that generation’s work. Through their texts, it examines how marginalization and marginality act as crucial factors in the configuration of urban segregation in Lima between the 40’s and 60’s. Likewise, it seeks to understand how these social problems have evolved and persisted over time, shaping a 21st-century Lima that continues to face the problems denounced by Ribeyro’s and Congrains’ works, especially in relation to urban fragmentation, economic exclusion and the dynamics of inequality. In addition, it explores how discrimination, maily marked by ethnic and social factors in the 50’s, has evolved into an economic discrimination that continues to deeply divide the city.

The new Comas? Residential trajectories of residents of high-rise multifamily buildings in El Retablo, Comas

Diego Ignacio Huaroto Casas — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

The presence of high-rise multifamily housing in the central areas of Latin American cities has been a trend since the 1980s, driven by the global economic liberalization. In Metropolitan Lima, this boom is evident in the construction of such housing in central districts like Jesús María, Lince, Breña, San Isidro, Miraflores, and others. However, over the past 15 years, this trend has extended to the city’s periphery. Comas is one of the districts where high-rise apartments have appeared, particularly due to projects in the El Retablo area on the former Aeroclub de Collique site. This suggests changes in both urban development in the district and in the expectations and experiences of citizens regarding this new type of housing. This study will focus on the latter, specifically investigating the residential trajectories of current residents of the El Retablo condominiums in Comas and how their expectations and desires influenced their decision to move to this new type of housing. The methodology is qualitative: interviews were conducted with residents from various condominiums in the area for subsequent analysis. The main reasons for moving to these condominiums were found to be the low cost of the apartments and the desire to own something. These reasons were influenced by their previous residential trajectories

“A Feeling Carried in the Heart, I’d Give My Whole Life to Be a Champion”: An Approach to the Expression of Sporting Cristal Fans’ Identity

Salomé Celeste Peña Hidalgo, Claudia Garland — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This research examines the identity of Sporting Cristal fans in Lima, Peru, focusing on personal identity, relational identity within the fan group (barra), and identity expression in other life spaces. For this purpose, qualitative methods were used, including in-depth interviews with six male and female fans, this study explores fans’ experiences, emotions, and sense of belonging related to the club. The findings reveal that fans’ personal identity with Sporting Cristal is rooted in family traditions, emotional connections, and shared values with the club. Their commitment is expressed through attending matches, purchasing club merchandise, and engaging in protests to voice their concerns. Within the fan group, fans develop close bonds, providing emotional and financial support to fellow supporters. However, female fans face challenges related to gender stereotypes within the male-dominated fan culture and navigate them by adopting masculine behaviors and relying on male allies within the barra. In other life spaces, fans balance their commitment to the club with family and work responsibilities, prioritizing in some cases their involvement in fan activities accordingly.

A look into new online masculinities. Discourse analysis: the case of Mr. Misterios, Alpha Males and the Manosphere

Manuela Albán Barreiro — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This essay analyzes the discourse of Mr. Misterios, a self-proclaimed “alpha male” who promotes the red pill philosophy on his YouTube channel. It is argued that this discourse emerges as a reaction to social changes that have empowered women, especially feminism and female sexual liberation, using Carol Pateman’s concept of the sexual contract (1995) as a theoretical basis. The red pill discourse is posited to go beyond traditional misogyny, becoming a “hostile sexism” that presents women as dangerous and socially powerful. Furthermore, Mr. Misterios is framed within the broader context of the manosphere, arguing that this type of online content serves as a pipeline to groups and forums with even more violent and radical rhetoric. In this sense, the essay seeks to account for the different concepts that characterize the discourse of the manosphere, such as female hypergamy, gynocentrism, and the red pill philosophy. It concludes by highlighting the need to pay attention to the mechanisms through which the manosphere spreads and normalizes sexist and aggressive discourses, taking advantage of the vulnerability of men who feel dissatisfied with their masculinity.

Desiring subjects: a theoretical approach to the dynamics of gay desire

Franklin Pease Gálvez — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Understanding gay desire as a social phenomenon is a conceptual challenge. This essay was born as an attempt to put together a theoretical apparatus that allows us to understand the dynamics of desire of young upper-class gay men from Lima for a thesis project. Different currents are reviewed to approach this phenomenon: from gender studies and queer theory, to French postmodernism and poststructuralism. With these contributions, the conceptual tools necessary to explain the desiring dynamics will be developed. These are constituted by the construction of the object of desire from the process of subjectivation and the development of courtship strategies that respond to that desired object. It also considers how the positions that desiring subjects assume in the dynamics of desire influence their social position. Along these lines, the aim is to emphasize the productive nature of desire, the subversiveness of the queer experience and the relationship between the subject and the structure. This dissertation is not intended to be a determining or essentialist statement of the nature of homosexual desire, but rather to propose a way to understand the ways in which young gay people come to desire and be desired in an environment that is often adverse to them.