Diotima, revista académica para la aventura del pensamiento
La revista académica Diotima es una iniciativa de la Universidad Mesoamericana cuyo anhelo consiste en promover el diálogo intelectual, el pensamiento crítico, los humanismos y las potencias poéticas subyacentes en todo pensar. Su nombre hace referencia a Diotima de Mantinea, figura mítica del mundo antiguo y adamantino horizonte de luminoso amor, virtud y bondad en las prácticas y los quehaceres del estudio, la construcción de la cultura y la búsqueda de la sabiduría. De periodicidad semestral y acceso abierto, publica artículos y ensayos dirigidos a la comunidad nacional e internacional. Sus contenidos son evaluados mediante arbitraje externo por pares ciegos dobles y revisión del Consejo Editorial, garantizando un alto nivel académico y científico.
Análisis fenomenológico y clínico de la identificación transespecie (therianismo) como mecanismo de adaptación disociativa en adolescentes: un estudio contextual en la Guatemala posmoderna
This article seeks to address the phenomenon of therians from a humanistic perspective, analyzing it as an symptomatic representation of the identity crisis experienced by adolescents in a era of digital hyperconnectivity. A diagnostic distinction is established between subjective variables and the clinical line, considering identity theriantropy (subjective) and clinical lycanthropy (psychotic). This article examines the function of the «animal Self» as a defense against relational trauma, the disconnection and misinformation that social media provides to adolescents, as well as affective orphanhood within the Guatemalan context. Furthermore, the article offers a reflection on the «moral panic» observed among the Guatemalan population and authorities responded in an alarmist manner to the emergence of this phenomenon, evading analysis of its underlying causes and overlooking the profound social anxieties of a society immersed in global crises that result in the persecution of resistant subjectivities. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for a clinical approach capable of distinguishing between identity exploration and severe pathology, promoting spaces of affective attunement in contrast to a world of institutional censorship that fosters intolerance rather than understanding.
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Principios doctrinales del magisterio de la Congregación Salesiana sobre la pastoral juvenil y universitaria
This article explores the doctrinal principles of the salesian magisterium concerning youth and university pastoral care, emphasizing its foundation in don Bosco’s Preventive System. Through key documents such as the Salesian Youth Ministry Frame of Reference (2014) and the Orientations for Campus Ministry in Salesian Institutions of Higher Education (2022), the study highlights how integral education, accompaniment, and synodality are essential pillars in the evangelization of young people. Additionally, it addresses the current challenges of university pastoral care and its role in forming leaders committed to social justice and evangelization in today’s world.
Cuando la educación es «cosa del corazón»: razón, religión y amorevolezza como catalizadores de la neuroplasticidad
Reason, religion and amorevolezza are three words articulated and lived by don Bosco, evolved from simple concepts into the backbone of one of most successful history’s pedagogical frameworks. Known as the Preventive System, this model transcends the classroom management; it constitutes a spiritual and rational architecture aimed to develop «good Christians and honest citizens». This article explores the intersection between 19th century salesian educational intuition and contemporary findings in cognitive-affective neuroscience. It proposes an analysis of the salesian triad through the lens of neuyrobiology: «reason» as scaffolding for the development of executive functions and the prefrontal cortex; «religion» not merely as dogmatic practice, but as a meaning system that activates rewed networks and spiritual resilience (neurotheology); and «amorevolezza» as a limbic system regulation mechanism essential for meaningful learning. The study entails an interdisciplinary theoretical review that posits the «family spirit» and accompaniment as an ecosystem capable of reducing stress and optimizing brain plasticity. Ultimately, it presents the Preventive System not as a historical relic, but as a brilliant anticipation and a living educational model of modern neuroeducation, where heart and brain align for the integrity of the student.
La construcción del Hospital San Juan de Dios en la Nueva Guatemala. Problemas de financiamiento, materiales y mano de obra
The city of Santiago de Guatemala suffered a devastating earthquake in 1773, forcing its relocation to a safer site. Royal authorities at the time believed that earthquakes were caused by volcanoes, given that these active volcanoes bordered the Panchoy Valley. Captain General Martin de Mayorga used the army to pressure the inhabitants of the ruined city of Guatemala to move. The valley of La Ermita, also known as Las Vacas, was chosen as the new location. In 1776, the first town council meeting was held there. From then on, the city of Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción had to rebuild from scratch, but unfortunately, the economy had collapsed due to the expenses incurred by relocating royal and religious institutions. This caused the city to take many years to beautify itself. One of the institutions affected in the construction of its building was the Royal Hospital of San Juan de Dios, which, due to adverse economic conditions, experienced problems with construction, labor, and materials. The objective of this study is to demonstrate the difficulties faced by Guatemala City in general, and specifically by the construction of the San Juan de Dios Hospital, which was run by the Hospitaller Brothers of Saint John of God. To this end, archival documentation was consulted to highlight the problems that plagued so many religious and charitable institutions, as was the case with this hospital.
Fenomenología de la culpa y justicia espectral: la memoria prostética en La Llorona
La cinematografía contemporánea de Centroamérica ha encontrado en la figura de Jayro Bustamante una de las voces más incisivas para desmantelar las estructuras de silencio y negación que han definido la posguerra en Guatemala. Jayro Bustamante, a través de su trilogía de películas, expone temas que afectan a la sociedad guatemalteca. En su tercera entrega cinematográfica, La Llorona (2019), Bustamante no solo clausura una trilogía de cuestionamiento interseccional —iniciada con Ixcanul (2014) y continuada con Temblores (2019)—, sino que propone una reconfiguración del trauma histórico a través de lo que Alison Landsberg denomina memoria prostética. Esta forma de memoria, que emerge de la interfaz entre un individuo y una narrativa histórica mediada por tecnologías culturales como el cine, permite que el espectador asuma como propios acontecimientos traumáticos que no ha vivido de manera biográfica, suturándose en una historia colectiva a través de un compromiso sensorial y afectivo. En este análisis, se explora cómo el despliegue técnico del sonido, la subversión del género de horror y la puesta en escena del juicio funcionan como catalizadores de esta transferencia afectiva, transformando la impunidad en una experiencia somática de justicia espectral.
¿Cómo habla el «subalterno» en Cárcel de árboles?
This text outlines the appropriation of language in Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s novel Cárcel de árboles and also analyzes it from the perspective of decolonization theory, primarly that of scholars Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. This theory aims to explore in greater depth the concept of the «subaltern» and how it can be identified in the Guatemalan writer’s work.
Discursos a la deriva de la corriente neosimbolista: el derecho al apalabramiento y a la verdad que revela el símbolo en el siglo XXI
This essay examines the need to situate the discourses that, within the framework of the postmodern post-avant-garde, adopt a neo-symbolic language to navigate the first quarter of the 21st century in Guatemalan literature.
Trazos del teatro político guatemalteco entre 1871 y 1954
The article provides an overview of the development of political theatre in Guatemala between 1871 and 1954, based on key milestones that shaped the country’s liberal and revolutionary periods. During the former, theatre functioned as an instrument of elite cultural hegemony, while following the October Revolution it acquired a more critical stance toward social reality. This historical review and analysis are grounded in the theoretical framework of historical materialism and political theatre, with the aim of examining theatre as a tool of ideological control and social transformation.
Imaginar el futuro desde un país con memoria fracturada
In a country where the past continues to be a subject of dispute and denial, imagining the future constitutes a deep political gesture. This essay analyzes how the historical and sociopolitical conditions in which Máximo Soto Hall, Reynaldo Ponce Arévalo, Ligia Escribá, Franz Galich, and Francisco Javier Aguirre Batres wrote, shaped their imaginaries of the future, showing that the science fiction and the fantastic genres can be spaces where the authors project their aspirations, fears, and criticisms toward the national future.
Rapsodia guatemalteca o el crisol de carencias contemporáneas
This essay examines the state of contemporary Guatemalan narrative through an intertextual journey spanning the Editorial X and its foundational generation to the millennial writers who followed. Using the musical metaphor of the rhapsody—a structure that often converses with literary tradition—as its guiding thread, the essay argues that twenty-first-century Guatemalan literature faces a crisis of continuity produced by the absence of critical spaces, editorial precarity, and a lack of historiographical documentation. As a case study, it analyzes Guatemalan Rhapsody (2025) by Jared Lemus, a second-generation Guatemalan-American author whose work accidentally adopts the countercultural mission of Editorial X by disregarding the established canon. The essay concludes that contemporary Guatemalan narrative is not nonexistent, but inconsequential: dispersed, without interlocutors, and stripped of the sustained conversation that defines a living literary tradition.
El espectro creativo: la creatividad como virtud
This essay proposes a definition of «creativity» that allows it to be understood as an Aristotelian virtue and, therefore, as the midpoint between two vices: one characterized by not finishing projects undertaken; the other, by not considering projects finished when, after a predetermined timeframe, they prove fruitless. The «blank page» metaphor represents a psychological tension or indeterminacy concerning the teleology of the human person; a tension or indeterminacy that manifests itself as a blank page (literally) in the case of writers. Likewise, the so-called «sunk cost fallacy» is formulated and subsequently postulated as the central argument of the positive, vicious extreme of the «creative spectrum». With an emphasis on the links between logic and rhetoric, and on the massive dimensions that the art of persuasion acquires in the cultural industries, it is argued, in short, that the sunk cost fallacy is, so to speak, the discreet enemy of creativity.
Platonismo y realismo en matemáticas y física: un estudio ontológico y epistemológico
This study examines, from an ontological and epistemological perspective, the fertile tension between mathematical Platonism —according to which mathematical objects and structures exist independently of the human mind— and scientific realism, which conceives physical theories as descriptions of entities and processes that exist objectively. Adopting a qualitative theoretical-analytical approach, the paper develops four central axes: (i) the genealogy of Platonism, from Plato to its contemporary reformulations in authors such as Gödel and Penrose; (ii) the status of realism in physics in light of the conceptual transformations introduced by relativity and quantum mechanics; (iii) the so-called mathematical–physical «bridge», evidenced by the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics (Wigner) and radicalized in the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (Tegmark); and (iv) a critical examination of alternative positions —nominalism, formalism, constructivism, and instrumentalism— together with their main contemporary objections. From a methodological standpoint, the study combines historical-conceptual analysis, critical review of classical and contemporary sources, and a theoretical–practical articulation through paradigmatic cases (Dirac, Maxwell, and the wave function). In addition, a hermeneutic-critical analysis of contrasting philosophical positions is developed, leading to a conceptual triangulation —ontological, epistemological, and methodological— that allows tensions to be understood not as obstacles but as heuristic resources. The author’s own contributions (Ruiz Castillo, 2024, 2025) show how computational complexity, dynamical systems, and the Collatz conjecture enter into dialogue with the Ontosemiotic Approach, illuminating the co-constitution of the mathematical and the physical. The central result argues that Platonism and realism, far from being mutually exclusive, are complementary: mathematics does not merely function as an instrument for physics but also contributes to structuring the ontological intelligibility of the world. The debate remains open regarding the dichotomy between discovery and invention; however, an intermediate position is proposed, according to which the construction of formal languages encounters structural constraints that point to an independent reality, thereby configuring mathematical–scientific practice as an activity that is simultaneously rational, critical, and contemplative.
Pedagogía del vacío: aprender desde el silencio
Learning requires a prior gesture of dispossession. Before acquiring knowledge, the subject must sustain the void that makes encounter possible. This essay proposes a pedagogy of emptiness: an education that welcomes silence as the condition of thinking and creation. Drawing from psychoanalysis and philosophy —notably Lacan, Bion, Zambrano, and Arendt— the classroom is understood as a symbolic space where speech does not fill but opens; where teaching accompanies the unfinished experience of learning. In an age that mistakes knowledge for accumulation, this pedagogy of the void recovers silence as an act of resistance and hospitality.
Melanipa la Sabia (Hipo-Hipe): inflexión histórico-filosófica más allá de la tragedia y el mito
The documentation of women's influence on the history of philosophy remains a largely neglected topic. This presence transcends physicality and can sometimes refer to women who, as fictional or mythological figures, have made fundamental contributions to philosophical reasoning. This is the case of Melanippe (Hippo, Hipe), who appears in two works by Euripides: Melanippe the Wise and Melanippe Bound. We have few fragments of the original works by their literary creator, as these plays have been lost. However, through historical-literary archaeology, it is possible to discover, using a hermeneutic methodology, a proto-philosophy that resonates with pre-Socratic naturalist thought, especially that of Anaxagoras. In other words, Melanippe is capable of theorizing the order of being beyond myth. This task requires the inclusion of other writers, philosophers, and even astronomers, who help piece together the puzzle and provide clarity regarding Melanippe's philosophical mindset. Among them are Hyginus, Eratosthenes, Callimachus, Cyril of Alexandria, and Julian the Apostate, among others. The reflections on Melanippe the Wise contained in this article aim to enrich the historical and philosophical knowledge of women philosophers, since philosophy is not a treasure reserved for men; on the contrary, it belongs to anyone who wishes to confront the mystery of being with rational courage, something scarce in our time.
Una mirada de la educación bajo los diez pilares: una reflexión desde el quehacer académico de la Universidad Mesoamericana en Quetzaltenango, Xelajú
This article presents research conducted at the Mesoamerican University of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, as part of a doctoral study in education. The study focused on observing and analyzing Guatemalan pedagogical practices and cultural values, contrasting them with those of Costa Rica. The results highlight the importance of Guatemalan cultural heritage, the pride in its ancestral traditions, and the connection between education and culture. The conclusion recommends strengthening cultural values in the educational systems of both countries and proposes fostering inter-university cooperation to promote a more enriching and effective academic and cultural exchange.
Marie Curie, a Polish nationalized Frenchwoman, was the scientist who, together with her husband, Pierre, discovered two elements of the periodic table, polonium and radium, in an environment of economic deprivation. She will be the mother of two daughters, Irene and Eva. Irene, as an adult, will help her in the laboratory and will later win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry; her mother obtained two, one in Physics and one in Chemistry, thus becoming the first and only woman with this prestige in the history of the Nobel Prize, as well as the first professor at the Sorbonne University, France. The seventh art has immortalized the figure of Marie in five feature films.
Pertenencias: el diálogo entre la imagen y la palabra. El espacio biográfico, las abuelas y los objetos
«Belongings: the dialogue between image and word. The biographical space, grandmothers, and objects» is a literary, visual, and audio investigation that seeks to explore the figure of the grandmother through a process of individual mourning that later became collective mourning. It is a photographic project about grandmothers and their belongings that brings us closer to the different ways in which a family documents and preserves its memories and dynamics, showing the role that women play in the family. It is a work that explores memory and genealogy, tracing each testimony that was compiled for the research. The development of this entire project is characterized by the constant intersection and dialogue between theory and practice, where both pursuits have influenced and affected each other through visual, literary, poetic, and intertextual elements.
A propósito de las marchas fúnebres y la mujer en la historia de Guatemala: Haydée Moncrieff Ruiz
This essay reviews the career of the composer Haydée Moncrieff Ruiz and how her musical compositions revealed an entire symbolic aesthetic outside of her time. Likewise, it conceptualizes the funeral march structurally, shows the presence of women composers in the genre in Guatemala and concludes with an invitation to delve deeper into the outstanding female composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
El culto a tres santas en Guatemala: santa Efigenia, santa Ana y Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
In Guatemala, devotion to several saints exists. Many of them originate in Europe, and with the conquest and Hispanization process, they were strengthened by indigenous traditions on American soil. One of the factors that helped invigorate these traditions is the emergence of brotherhoods around these saints and also in particular devotions. This brief study will analyze devotions to several saints, including Saints Efigenia, Anne, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, who was venerated in the former Arribillaga family oratory located at the Guadalupe sugar mill in the town of Petapa, as a deeply rooted Marian devotion in Guatemala.
El envoltorio sagrado en la plástica y el ritual
The depth and complexity of Mesoamerican religious beliefs and practices provoke amazement and perplexity. Mesoamerican man manifested in various ways a close relationship with the field of the sacred, among them was the veneration of the stone and wooden images of his gods, but a special cult was also paid to the tlaquimilolli, a type of sacred bundle that contained relics and objects linked to specific divinities. The tlaquimilolli occupy a prominent place in Mesoamerican religion because they were a privileged means of communication with the gods, and a symbol of identity intimately linked to the foundational events that gave rise to numerous lordships or altepeme, as well as the emergence of family lineages or dynasties. The Olmec archaeological site of El Manati reveals that the tlaquimilolli emerged in the Preclassic; moreover, they persisted in certain regions of Mesoamerica years after the fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan, as evidenced by the Inquisitorial Process of Yanhuitlan (Oaxaca). In Mesoamerica, the cult of ancestors was especially expressed in the veneration of sacred wrappings, which were very important as a means of legitimizing their rulers. In the Mixtec region, the cult of the sacred bulk was the main religious manifestation; here two types of ritual bundles are distinguished: the communal ones guarded inside the temples, which contain relics, sacred and symbolic objects linked to the gods, and the wrappings belonging to a specific family or lineage, preserved in the houses or palaces of their owners, and which generally received a private cult. The domestic baskets testify to the persistence of pre-Cortesian religious beliefs and practices in the Hispanic era, they are linked to the sacred wrappings because their heterogeneous set of objects includes the tlapialli, the effigies of the protective gods of the lineage, responsible for the well-being of the family. It is surprising to see that, until a few years ago, in the brotherhoods of the Tz'utujil population of Santiago Atitlan, the veneration of ritual bundles or wrappings persisted. In Maya plastic art we can verify the presence of ritual bundles on the lintels of Yaxchilan, commissioned by the Yaxuun B'alam IV (Jaguar Bird IV) sovereign, and on polychrome vessels for cocoa drinks, from the kingdoms of Nakbe and Naranjo.
Evolución de los flujos migratorios mixtos atendidos por la Red de Protección y Monitoreo de la Pastoral de Movilidad Humana de la Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala entre 2016 y 2021 y posibles tendencias a futuro
The aim of this article is to analyze the main changes that have taken place in mixed migratory flows (MMF) that go through Guatemala on their way to the United States or Mexico, and that receive humanitarian assistance and monitoring by the Pastoral of Human Mobility of the Episcopal Conference of Guatemala. It is assumed that significant changes have been recorded or are expected to occur in the structure and composition of these MMF in terms of nationality, sex, age groups, collective mobility and reasons for emigrating between two specific periods: the pre-pandemic period (2016-2019) and the transition period (2020-2021). Regarding nationality, Venezuelans will displace Hondurans as the majority group. Regarding sex and age, these MMF will gradually increase the presence of the female population and will also have a higher proportion of children. The male component, however, will maintain its predominance and collective mobility will the main kind of displacements. The main reasons for emigration will continue to be the lack of economic or job opportunities and forced migration, but this last one will increase as the causes of this type of emigration are not only due to violent acts perpetrated by gang members, mainly in Honduras, but also due to repression perpetrated by state authorities in other countries, for example: Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Emigration due to environmental disasters will also gain importance, as people become aware of the negative effects of climate change. Finally, this article emphasizes on the reasons for forced migration, the violence inflicted on people in transit through Guatemalan territory, especially perpetrated by state authorities according to the reports of those affected, and the impossibility of returning to countries of origin (reverse or return migration) due to hostile conditions towards life and the integrity of the person. Finally, possible trends that will define the MMF in the following years are listed.
Arquitecturas de disciplinamiento en Tristes sombras de Lola Ancira
In this paper, I analyze the short stories «Furor impius» and «De qué eres memoria», published in the collection Tristes sombras by Mexican writer Lola Ancira. To do so, I draw on foundational methodological texts for the analysis of biopolitics by Michel Foucault. I also rely on interpretations of Foucault in the Mexican context, particularly those by philosopher María Inés García Canal. I argue that Ancira’s representation of the spaces of La Castañeda and Lecumberri adopts a critical stance toward the construction of Mexican modernity and addresses specific issues such as internal migration, the unequal distribution of labor and the disciplining of bodies, especially women’s bodies. I conclude by examining Ancira’s position of enunciation in a moment marked by the reactivation of necropolitical control over bodies, exercised not only by the State but also by various parallel centers of power, such as drug trafficking networks.
Atmósferas y presencias. Aproximaciones a la obra poética de Louise Glück
This article explores the poetry of Louise Glück, from an approach to her works Ararat and The Wild Iris. Each collection of poems will be examined from the conception that the author establishes about the books as atmospheres, where it is possible to recognize diverse manifestations that refer to a whole, to a poetic body inhabitable by the author, by her verses and by those of us who approach her texts. Finally, regarding to the examples cited in the article, Glück's vision of the durability of the poem, not as an object, but as a presence, is studied.
Arcane: transhumanismo, tecnologías convergentes y guerra antropológica
Arcane is a television series that addresses contemporary interdisciplinary issues such as convergent technologies and anthropological warfare, all through a deep and nuanced exemplification of transhumanist thought that clearly shows the objectives and purpose of this ideology so representative of the so-called postmodernity. When the anthropological warfare of the series reaches its critical point, it is suggested that the long-term survival of the human species will depend largely on the responsible management of these convergent technologies. For these and many other factors, Arcane is so revealing of the intellectual landscape of the early 21st century.
El lenguaje de la astrología y sus efectos en la construcción de la identidad
Given astrology’s resurgence in everyday life in the early 20th century and its popularization in social media platforms, the question arises as to where the attraction to this pseudoscience stems from. Through an analysis of the use of language, it is concluded that it is an identity crisis that has pushed individuals towards this practice. The lack of self-knowledge and character has created an insecure generation with no self-respect. Making them incapable of taking agency over their own lives.
Dios y la pluralidad mental: abordaje desde la filosofía analítica de la religión
Analytic philosophy of religion is a field that has gained considerable relevance for the fashion it deals with its problems, especially for the creativity of its analyses that address topics from other philosophical fields. The philosophy of mind, with its questions, joins the dialogue that seeks to account for divine mysteries. It is here where the problem of the existence of God can be compared with the problem of other minds. Based on the analysis carried out by Alvin Plantinga, who addresses the problem of other minds and the question about the existence of God through the analogical argument and the teleological argument, this text seeks to explain how the analytical philosophy of religion can reach logical conclusions that demonstrate the rationality of its arguments, giving rise to new considerations in the philosophical and religious fields.
Saber hacer con la nada: psicoanálisis, creación y poética
This article offers a reflection on the connection between art, creation, and the structure of the human psyche, drawing on key Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts such as foreclosure, sublimation, and the sinthome. Through an approach that merges theory and aesthetic experience, the author examines how artistic creation can be understood as a subjective response to the structural lack inherent in language, and as a unique way of working with jouissance. It also addresses the notions of authorship, originality, and representation through thinkers such as Agamben, Foucault, and Quignard, situating art as poiesis and gesture in relation to the void.
Diotima de Mantinea, maestra-sabia y partera en la contemplación del Eros (Amor): alcances histórico-filosóficos desde El Banquete de Platón
The history of philosophy has not always given importance to the imprint that women have had on the construction of culture. This occurs with greater incidence in the Ancient Ages and the Middle Ages; a statement that does not free the Modern Age from this displacement. However, Plato in his work The Symposium, makes an exception when he discusses the essence of Eros (Love). It will be a woman —Diotima of Mantinea— who instructs Socrates in a maieutic path so that he can understand and contemplate Eros as an archetype belonging to the eidetic world. Diotima will be a wise teacher who will reveal this mystery to the disciple; It will lead him through elevation and purification to a metaphysical contemplation of the mystery of Love. And, although the unknown remains at play about his historical-geographic existence, the philosophical impact that Plato attributes to her in the dialogue established with Socrates weighs more. This writing will allow the reader to conclude that the construction of philosophical knowledge and other areas of culture, such as science, art, humanities, technology, among others, are not an exclusive task for men, but rather an open horizon for everyone who wants to delve with rigor and seriousness into the mystery of Being.