This 2025-2026 edition of Lucero, the graduate journal of UC Berkeley’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, took as its starting point the concept of revolution. Beyond considering revolutions as mere historical moments, this edition’s offerings theorize revolutions as catalysts for cultural change, working through media ranging from newspapers to the ephemera of imagination.

In her work, “La revolución filipina: Las manifestaciones de resistencia anticolonial y conflicto identitario en la prensa hispanofilipina,” Noelle Whitman considers a Filipino press caught in the transition from one empire to another. Maria Andrea Diaz takes her readers to Cuba, delving into nuevo cine cubano as she considers the social imaginary of revolution that emanated outward from the pioneering cultural moments of 1960s Cuba. This edition of Lucero considers also what it means for literature to be truly revolutionary rather than responding to the event of revolution. Javier Catano Garcia plunges in “Narrating the Naturalist Novel: Matilde Cherner’s Approach in María Magdalena (1880)” to the question of novelistic form, contending that María Magdalena deploys a female voice in such a way to break the conventions of genre. Finally, Marguerite Morlan considers revolution on the level of language itself in “La identidad en los muros públicos: Análisis lingüístico y temático del paisaje lingüístico transgresor en dos ciudades catalanas”. Transgression writes itself into the walls and signage of Spain’s landscape, the revolution burgeoning before our eyes.

The Lucero editorial team thanks the authors who entrusted us with their work, as well as the faculty, staff, and fellow graduate students of the UC Berkeley Department of Spanish and Portuguese for their support.

Lucero

“En tiempo puro”: The Search and Discovery of Territory in the Life and Work of Aida Cartagena Portalatín