The decolonial empathy of two Maya documentaries shown at the XIII CLACPI film festival : FicMayab

In this article, I analyze two short documentaries Kat at Kat’ex? (2017) and Sepur Zarco: la vida después de la sentencia (2018), both directed by the Maya-K’iche-Kaqchikel media maker from Guatemala, Eduardo Say, and shown at the XIII CLACPI Film Festival-FicMayab’. Both movies feature Mayan witnesses to and survivors of the violence of the civil war in Guatemala. They share their stories of loss and pain with the diverse audiences convened by the festival. I argue that these movies, in referring to the past, constitute platforms in which these witnesses enact forms of reproduction of life through embodied social practices and acts of care that, in turn, portray them as agents of the reconstitution of their own present. I contend that these movies extend an invitation to the Western(ized) viewer to relate to the Maya testimonios of pain and realities, both within the films’ frame and outside of it. I use the term “decolonial empathy” to refer to this invitation that considers the Maya peoples’ self-determination in the face of state violence and its legacies.peer-reviewe

Population trends and priority conservation sites for Mexican Duck Anas diazi

Little is known about Mexican Duck Anas diazi biology and populations. We analyse long-term (1960–2000) trends of Mexican Duck numbers in Mexico and employ contemporary count data (1991–2000) from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service midwinter surveys to identify key sites for conservation using a complementarity approach. The overall Mexican Duck population showed a significant long-term increase of 2.5% per year, with large fluctuations throughout the study period. The Northern highlands population increased at an annual rate of 7.7%, while the Central highlands population showed no significant long-term trend. During the last decade, counts in both the Northern and Central highlands exhibited no significant change. At the site level, significant long-term increases occurred in four localities in the Northern highlands (Laguna Babícora +13.9% annually, Laguna Bustillos +25.9%, Laguna Mexicanos +20.4% and Laguna Santiaguillo +16.9%) and in three localities in the Central highlands (Languillo +15.3% annually, Presa Solís +8.9%, Zacapu +13.4%). Two sites in the Central highlands showed significant declines, in the long term (Lago de Chapala, -5.2% per year) and during the last decade (Lerma, -11.8% per year). The Northern highlands held 16% and the Central highlands 84% of the Mexican Duck population in the period 1960–2000; during the last decade, these figures were 31% and 69%, respectively. A set of priority sites for conservation of the Mexican Duck was identified, consisting of 15 sites holding more than 70% of the midwinter Mexican Duck counts in Mexico. Ten sites from the priority set also qualify for designation as wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, by holding [greater-than-or-equal] 1% of the estimated population. Four of the priority sites are in the Northern highlands and 11 in the Central highlands, of which eight are distributed along the Rio Lerma drainage. The most urgent actions that need to be undertaken are to estimate the current minimum population size in Mexico; to establish a programme for monitoring populations in the priority sites, especially those located within the highly degraded Rio Lerma drainage; and to determine the most feasible management actions for the species, concentrating efforts around the priority sites

Testing Constancy in Varying Coefficient Models

This article proposes tests for constancy of coefficients in semi-varying coefficients models. The testing procedure resembles in spirit the union-intersection parameter stability tests in time series, where observations are sorted according to the explanatory variable responsible for the coefficients varying. The test can be applied to model specification checks of interactive effects in linear regression models. Because test statistics are not asymptotically pivotal, critical values and p-values are estimated using a bootstrap technique. The finite sample properties of the test are investigated by means of Monte Carlo experiments, where the new proposal is compared to existing tests based on smooth estimates of the unrestricted model. We also report an application to returns of education modelingResearch funded by Ministerio Economía y Competitividad (Spain), ECO2017-86675-P & MDM 2014-0431, and by Comunidad de Madrid (Spain), MadEco-CM S2015/HUM-3444