About the register

El Universal keeps a standing record of things made across Latin America: what the object is, what it is made of, the technique that makes it that object rather than another, and the place that makes it that way.

The four fields are the whole editorial method. Object, material, technique, place, in that order, on every entry, so that two things made a thousand miles apart can be set beside each other and compared on the same terms.

An entry is added when the technique is specific enough to describe and the material is specific enough to name. That rules out a great deal — whole categories of things that are made everywhere in more or less the same way — and it lets in objects that would not usually sit in the same index: a grinding stone, a printed sheet, a shading device cast into a concrete facade.

Living traditions are described as they are practised, in the words their practitioners use for them, and glossed in English the first time. Where a technique belongs to one community, the entry says so rather than presenting it as regional. Where a technique is genuinely widespread, the entry says that too, and names the places it has been recorded rather than implying a single origin.

The six sections

The site is written in English throughout. The masthead is the only Spanish on it, and it is the site’s own name.