Peace is a concept that is not usually associated with Latin America. Rather, various forms of violence, whether criminal, state, economic or cultural, are commonly associated with the region. The studies gathered here emphasize that, although the subcontinent is historically affected by these serious crises, it is also characterized by important attempts to confront them and seek forms of peaceful coexistence. The analytical perspective developed here understands peace as always intertwined with violence and proposes it as a continuous effort of resistance.

This volume analyzes the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the policy measures related to its containment in Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributions highlight the consequences of the pandemic in terms of social inequalities, gender relations, violence against women, migration, democracy, human rights, protest mobilization and environmental policy.

The escalation of the conflict in Eastern Europe following the invasion of Russian troops into Ukrainian territory on February 24, 2022 has immediately become a crisis of global dimensions and consequences. Although Latin America and the Caribbean are supposedly far from the war, they are not exempt from the impacts and political or economic repercussions.

In a country as diverse as Mexico, where 68 indigenous languages and many variants of Spanish are spoken, linguistic prejudices continue to be reproduced both in the educational and institutional context and in everyday practices associated with language use. Despite so much linguistic variety, it is important to eradicate the belief that the only correct and valid way to speak and produce knowledge is through the use of "standard" Spanish represented by normative grammars.

The relationship between sociology and literature has always been characterized by conflicts and complementarities. Since the end of the 19th century, a new episteme on the knowledge of reality and the unrealities that configure it has been consolidated. Whether as a challenge to understand the "human comedy" or as a way of discovering the unconscious, commodity fetishism or the enigma of modernity, sociology and literature have walked the crossroads of the sociological imagination.

Every knowledge producer linked to an institution has experienced the imperatives that, through rules and hierarchies, channel the production of knowledge and limit the results generated there.

Historical studies of violent pasts in Latin America are intrinsically connected to memory studies and, more broadly, to memory politics and memorial cultures. Struggles to explain the construction of the present reflect how societies constantly seek to reinterpret their past, leading to strong political debates and conflicts. The question of how to deal with traumatic past experiences, often related to political violence, has become an issue of great social relevance in many Latin American countries.