Housed in a specially designed and renovated eighteenth-century mansion in the City of Oaxaca, Mexico, the Museo Textil de Oaxaca (the Textile Museum of Oaxaca or MTO), opened in 2008. Its core mission is to highlight the exciting range of textile techniques, materials, creative processes, and designs in Oaxaca and around the world. Through cultural and educational activities, the MTO aims to improve the quality of life for textile artisans within their communities and within society as a whole. It emphasizes the ongoing exchange of skills and knowledge through an exhibition program, specialized textile collections open to the public, workshops, residencies, and educational activities. Its community-oriented, open and accessible mandate make the MTO the only museum of its kind-an institution that brings together members of the public, artisans, artists, and designers, blending traditional and contemporary approaches. The Museum is funded by the Fundacion Alfredo Harp Helu, a private foundation. Ana Paula Fuentes served as the Museum's first Executive Director, from 2008 to 2012. Born in Mexico City, she holds a BA in Textile Design with postgraduate studies in Knit and Fashion Knitwear Design. Influenced by the time she spent at the Cochineal Center in Oaxaca, her thesis explored the Oaxacan huipil. Prior to directing the MTO, she worked in Barcelona and Mexico City designing fashion knitwear collections. She is the cofounder of the experimental 11011 Studio in Oaxaca City, and the founder of Artesana, a craft market network in Mexico. As Museum Director, Ana Paula Fuentes was actively involved in developing and implementing the Museum's core values and mandate, establishing projects promoting cultural exchange, outreach programs, workshops, and exhibitions involving Oaxacan textile makers. She is uniquely positioned to reflect on its role as an institutional space dedicated as much to the preservation of textiles and textile traditions and skills as it is to fostering social and community space.

abstract The novel A Guerra dos Bastardos, by Ana Paula Maia, presents a dense tableau of fictional violence. This text contains all forms of violence included in Johan Galtung=E2=80=99s triangle: visible or direct violence and invisible or structural and cultural violence, as well as various forms of symbolic violence, as proposed by Pierre Bourdieu. These types of violence are represented through different textual strategies: brutalism, irony, =E2=80=9Cgore=E2=80=9D distancing etc. This essay analyses these forms of representation, paying particular attention to the literary treatment given to the description of both violence against women and violence by women. In addition, of central importance to this analysis is the issue of female authorship.=09