SPRING/SUMMER 2018

HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA CLIMATE CHANGE

MUSICCLIMATE CHANGE EDITOR’S LETTER BY JUNE CAROLYN ERLICK

Chocolate, Parrots and Melting Snowmen

My colleague burst into my office, declaring, “Do you know climate change is going to VOLUME XVIII NO.3 wipe out chocolate?” Somewhere between joking and broken-hearted, she added, “We David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies better stock up.” Director A few minutes later, being the excellent researcher she is, my colleague—who asked to Brian Farrell be called “Anastasia” because she didn’t want to reveal her chocolate addiction in public— Executive Director sent me an e-mail with many sources. One of the headlines read, “Chocolate to Go Extinct in Andrew Elrick Forty Years” (Business Insider, Dec. 31, 2017). The article warned that cacao plants might die ReVista out because of rising temperatures and lessening humidity around the equator. In an attempt Editor-in-Chief to save chocolate, scientists at the University of California are teaming with candy industry June Carolyn Erlick giant Mars to change the genes of the plant, the article noted. The scientists observed in a Copy Editor later statement that they were working on making cacao more disease resistant, and that— Anita Safran even if climate change affected some production—chocolate was not about to disappear. Publication Interns Chocolate lovers, relax. Isabel Espinosa Sylvie Stoloff But climate change is already affecting many aspects of our lives and other areas that do Isaac Ochoa not affect us directly, so we don’t think about them. Lisa Paravisini-Gebert tells us how some Design parrot species are on the verge of extinction partly because of the increased frequency and Jane Simon Design strength of hurricanes, attributed by scientists to climate change. John Waldron writes about Printer a novel by Puerto Rican writer Mayra Montero in which a frog species is disappearing in Haiti. P+R Publications

Jai Chowdhry Beeman—who was a long-time ReVista intern before he began his doctoral Contact Us work on glaciers—examines how mountain water systems in Peru and Bolivia will respond to 1730 Cambridge Street climate change. Cambridge, MA 02138 Telephone: 617-495-5428 Yet what struck me as I edited this magazine is that it is not all doom and gloom. As Subscriptions, Back Copies and Comments Harvard Center for the Environment director Daniel Schrag notes in his First Take, climate [email protected] change is already happening, and we have to figure out ways to manage it. Most of the Website authors in this issue are looking at solutions, whether through local action or philanthropy revista.drclas.harvard.edu or scientific studies. Some point out meliorative steps already taken or envisaged (for Facebook example, in Chile); some of the authors put climate change in the context of other types of ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America environmental degradation caused by humans. Some take a regional view; others look at a Copyright © 2018 by the President and specific community. Some use the study of art and literature as a way to make the complex Fellows of Harvard College. ISSN 1541—1443 science accessible to a broad audience. ReVista is printed on recycled stock. As I interacted with the assigned authors, another pattern became visible—an immense emphasis on North-South collaboration, not just citing works, but co-authoring articles and building bridges. For instance, Karl Zimmerer brought in his collaborators from Peru, and Krister Andersson his Chilean collaborator Patricio Valdivieso. You’ll see the pattern yourself as you read this issue of ReVista. Scientists, architects, literary critics, archaeologists, geographers, political scientists and economists have come together in these pages to think about the problems and challenges of climate change. The process can’t be reversed perhaps, but hopefully it can be slowed and managed. Here’s to parrots in the jungles of Puerto Rico, slower melting glaciers in Peru and Bolivia, and, yes, Anastasia, to chocolate in 2050. HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA

SPRING/SUMMER 2018 VOLUME XIII NO. 3

Published by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Harvard University

PHOTO CLOCKWISE, NICOLÓ FILIPPO ROSSO, MAXI JONAS, EMILY BLAIR

CLIMATE CHANGE

FIRST TAKE PUBLIC SPACES, LOCAL SOLUTIONS The Timescales of Climate Change By Daniel P. Schrag 2 The Green Leap Forward by Pablo Allard 65 Why Local Governments Matter by CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE Krister Andersson and Patricio Valdivieso 68 The Brave New World of the Digital Herbarium by Charles C. Davis Design With Water by Manuel Perló Cohen and Aaron M. Ellison 8 and Loreta Castro Reguera Mancera 72 Fragments of Hope Nursery by Jenna Chaplin and Emily Blair 13 Fleeing the Weather by Elizabeth Donger 14 BOOK TALK Preparing Students to Lead Social Change by Ramón Sánchez, A Tale of Survival A Review Erika Eitland, Jie Yin and John Spengler 18 by Marguerite Feitlowitz 76 Beyond Climate Change by Veronica Herrera 22 Latin Roots and Universal Suffering A Review by Dalia Wassner 78 THROUGH THE LENS OF LITERATURE The Melting of Humankind by Maria Alessandra Woolson 26 LAST LOOK 84 Writing at the End of the World by John Waldron 30 Words That Matter by Gisela Heffes 33 Who More Cli-Fi than Us? by Patricia Valderrama 38 ONLINE Look for more content online at CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES revista.drclas.harvard.edu Understanding Global Climate Change from Andean Glaciers by Jai C. Beeman and Jean Carlos Ruíz Hernandez 42 ON THE COVER The Parrots of the Caribbean by Lisa Paravisini-Gebert 45 Ice sculpture “Minimum Photoessay: the 2017 El Niño Costero by Ari Caramanica 48 Monument” by Brazilian Extreme Hydraulic Urbanism by Gustavo Diaz Paz 51 artist Néle Azevedo Climate Change and Food by Karl S. Zimmerer, Andrew D. Jones, melts on the steps of Stef de Haan, Hilary Creed-Kanashiro, Miluska Carrasco, Krysty Mesa, Berlin’s Concert Hall at Milka Tello, Franklin Plasencia Amaya, Gisela Cruz García the Gendarmenmarkt on September 2, 2009. and Ramzi Tubbeh 53 Photoessay: Climate Change and Resource Pressures PHOTO BY MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK/AFP/GETTY by Nicoló Filippo Rosso 58 IMAGES.

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 1 FIRST TAKE

The Timescales of Climate Change By DANIEL P. SCHRAG

THE ENERGY CHOICES WE MAKE TODAY ARE famous Keeling curve, a record of that even the beginning of the Keeling resulting in changes in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) measured in mid- curve is higher than any CO2 level in carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere twentieth century at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, the last 800,000 years. Over this time that will be seen in the composition of the documents how the entire atmosphere is interval, CO2 reached a minimum of atmosphere for hundreds of thousands affected by human activities, rising from 180 ppm during glacial maxima and of years. Climate change is here; it’s happening and going to be with us for 315 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to peaked around 280 ppm during the thousands of years. more than 407 ppm today. interglacial periods, roughly every Of all environmental consequences But this famous graph understates the 100,000 years—with the largest change from human activities, the perturbation extraordinary rate for this interference occurring over 10,000 years. Through a in carbon dioxide released from burning in the natural world. Placing the Keeling variety of geochemical measurements, fossil fuels may be most significant curve alongside longer records of atmospheric CO2 concentration can be because of the scale of the disruption atmospheric CO2 measured in air bubbles estimated over much longer time scales, and the longevity of its impacts. The from ice cores from Antarctica shows suggesting that current values above

2 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO ABOVE BY OSCAR NEGREIROS/OJOS PROPIOS/ILAS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; OPPOSITE PAGE, PHOTO BY ERIKA EITLAND FIRST TAKE

400 ppm are higher than the Earth has experienced for several million years, and rising more than 100 times faster than any previous time we have measured. The rise in atmospheric CO2 is unlikely to recover to pre-industrial levels anytime soon. The ocean takes up about twenty percent of the carbon dioxide we emit each year, helping to cushion the response to human activities. That rate of uptake is limited not by chemical exchange with the atmosphere, which happens across the sea surface relatively quickly, but rather by the mixing of the surface ocean into greater depths. It is impossible to speed up the mixing of the oceans, as that is driven by the rotation of the Earth, and by the tidal forces of the moon and other planets. Over the next several thousand years, the mixing of the oceans will take up roughly 70 percent to 80 percent of the carbon dioxide that humans have produced from fossil fuels. But the residual CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for a very long time. Over the next 100,000 to 200,000 years, a slight increase in the chemical reaction rate between water, CO2 and rock will slowly convert the CO2 to calcium carbonate, mostly as shells on the sea floor, and the climate impacts of human activities will subside. There are many other long timescales in the climate system, although none quite as long as the carbon cycle. For example, it remains uncertain exactly how long warming will continue even after CO2 levels stabilize, mostly because we don’t fully understand critical feedbacks in the climate system that can amplify the direct effects of higher greenhouse gas concentrations, as well as feedbacks in the carbon cycle that can add additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But another uncertainty in our ability to predict how climate will respond to higher CO2 levels comes from the timescales of heat mixing into the ocean. If the Earth were only land, with no oceans and no ice, and we doubled the atmospheric CO2 concentration (and Dzilam Bravo Wind Farm currently has 28 330-foot tall wind turbines under construction managed to keep it there), the Earth and will provide renewable energy to approximately 32,000 homes in the area.

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would reach a new stable temperature relatively quickly, in less than a decade or so. Two major factors slow down the response of the real Earth system, making it challenging to know how much climate change lies ahead, even if we were able to stabilize atmospheric CO2. The first factor is heat uptake by the ocean. Of all the solar energy trapped in the Earth by greenhouse gases, more than 90 percent goes into heating the oceans. Indeed, one can think of the oceans as a vast reservoir of coolant, helping to slow down the climate change that is happening over the land. Heat uptake by the oceans tempers the impacts of climate change on the surface, but it only buys us time. Over the next few hundred years, temperatures in the upper third of the ocean will slowly rise, and this will drive additional warming of the surface, even if atmospheric CO2 levels are no longer rising. This is both good and bad. It is good that ocean heat uptake is slowing down the climate response, giving us Over the next few hundred years, temperatures in more time to adapt to the changes. But it is bad because this means that even after the upper third of the ocean will slowly rise, and we stop emitting CO2 (i.e., stop burning this will drive additional warming of the surface, fossil fuels in our current manner), the Earth’s surface will keep warming for even if atmospheric CO2 levels are no longer rising. centuries, leaving future generations the obligation to manage the environmental sheets helps to resist the warming that is committed to some 10 to 15 meters of sea consequences of our energy choices. happening in other parts of the world. level rise in the long-term future. The second factor that contributes to As far as timescale, we do not know Even if this process occurs over a slowing down the rate of warming at the how quickly the melting of these ice sheets thousand years, remaining relatively surface is the ice sheets in Greenland and could occur: neither observations nor minor for any single generation, it is Antarctica. These ice sheets are massive models provide enough information. The a sobering thought that the actions of parts of our surface water budget; the timescale for the Greenland and West humans over a relatively short sp an of ice sheet on Greenland contains the Antarctic ice-sheets could be hundreds history will impact the planet in such a equivalent of more than seven meters of of years, or thousands of years. The profound way and for such a long time. sea level (i.e., if Greenland melted, sea timescale for parts of the East Antarctic One thing is certain—however long it level would rise more than seven meters ice-sheet is likely to be longer because it takes for these ice sheets to melt or slide on average); West Antarctic ice sheets is so cold and also less vulnerable to rapid into the ocean, it will take much, much contain roughly six meters of sea level collapse due to topography and glacial longer for them to grow again, driven by equivalent; and the massive terrain of structure. Paleoclimate data suggests that the slow accumulation of snow on glaciers East Antarctica stores more than fifty the Greenland ice sheet probably cannot over tens of thousands of years, once (if?) meters of sea level equivalent. Although survive in a world where atmospheric the overall climate returns to its pre- far smaller than heat uptake by the oceans, carbon concentrations are above 400 ppm industrial state. the melting of ice sheets is also important (their current level). The same is probably Another critical timescale of climate in the Earth’s energy budget, and is true for the West Antarctic ice-sheet, and change is the timescale for building new particularly important in Antarctica, for small parts of the East Antarctic ice- energy systems. Unlike some technological where the presence of such massive ice sheet. This implies that we may already be revolutions like telecommunications or

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information technology, creating new backup generating capacity, which also at current rates of installation of wind energy systems requires building massive adds to the need for more infrastructure. and solar, which set a record in 2017, amounts of infrastructure— including A final factor involves the issue of how this would take more than 300 years. huge amounts of cement and steel. And electric grids will manage the intermittent Can this be accelerated? Yes—but only a new, non-fossil system spearheaded by power from solar and wind. One proposal with massive political will that does not wind and solar power will likely require is to install additional wind and solar currently exist. building even more infrastructure than capacity spread in different places, Another example of the long timescale our current one, due to the intermittency of connected by a much better transmission for turnover of energy technology is in the renewable resources. First, solar and wind network, increasing the likelihood that area of biofuels. Brazil has led the world power have lower capacity factors than coal sufficient sun and wind will be available in building ethanol refineries, using sugar or natural gas generating plants—meaning from somewhere. The problem is that cane as the primary feedstock. Biofuel that they produce a relatively small amount this requires even more capacity—and refineries typically measure their output of electricity annually relative to their so more infrastructure and a longer time in units of gallons per year (as opposed to nameplate capacity, simply because the to build it. Overall, the electricity system barrels per day for the oil industry); when sun doesn’t always shine and the wind alone (ignoring other energy sectors, such one uses common units, the comparison doesn’t always blow. This means that we as liquid fuels) is likely to be at least five to oil is sobering. For example, the world’s have to build more capacity to get the same times larger than it is today, even if we largest ethanol refinery is currently being amount of total electricity. Second, because are able to manage the intermittency of developed in Brazil and will have a peak solar and wind energy are intermittent, it is solar and wind with cheap batteries and output of 12,000 barrels per day. The very likely that we will need to maintain flexible demand. For the United States, largest oil refinery, the Jamnagar refinery

PHOTO ABOVE BY JUDITH MILAGROS/OJOS PROPIOS/ILAS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 5 CLIMATE CHANGE

societies might do if the rate of climate change were to accelerate over the next few decades, or if the consequences were much worse than anticipated. One approach is the engineering of our climate system by adjusting the incoming solar radiation by injecting aerosols into the stratosphere; indeed, there may be some ways to accomplish a reduction in solar radiation at relatively low cost relative to other strategies of mitigation. Recently, such ideas have gained more prominence, not as a substitute for serious emissions reductions, but in the sober realization that efforts to reduce emissions may not be sufficient to avoid dangerous consequences. The power to engineer the climate comes with an awesome responsibility. How could we engineer such a system to be failsafe? Which countries would control this effort? Who would decide how much to use, or when? And what would happen

Child at pig farm Fundo Oquendo, Callao (Chancheria), 1992. if something went wrong, if we discovered some unforeseen consequences that in India, has a capacity 100 times larger, long as humans continue to emit carbon required shutting the effort down once and took nearly 10 years to build. If dioxide from fossil fuel. The first challenge human societies and natural ecosystems biofuels will someday replace petroleum we must confront in working towards a depended on it? These scientific, political, fuels, at least for applications like jetfuel solution to future climate change is that and ethical questions will be debated over and diesel that are difficult to replace with any “solution” will be incomplete. Some the next few years and decades. However, electrification, then the timescale to build amount, perhaps even a substantial it is likely that they will not be hypothetical the necessary refining capacity is very long. amount, of climate change is unavoidable. for long; even with the most urgent efforts And even more challenging than Some people have argued that we dispense over the next decade to take action and the timescale for building systems with with trying to reduce greenhouse gas pursue mitigation efforts, we should mature technology, we must also face the emissions and focus all our efforts on understand that we are heading into a reality that eliminating fossil fuels from preparing for the consequences, trying to climate state that no human has ever seen. our energy system is likely to require avert the impacts of climate change or at Surprises are inevitable; how we deal with new technological innovation far beyond least make them less costly. The flaw in them may be our greatest challenge. our current energy systems. Non-fossil this argument is that preparing for climate energy systems, from electric vehicles to change becomes more and more difficult— Daniel P. Schrag is the director of concentrated solar that allows for flexible ultimately impossible—if mitigation is not the Harvard Center for the Environ- generation, to advanced nuclear energy, pursued. The consequences of ignoring ment and the co-director of the Science, all must become much, much cheaper climate change and allowing atmospheric Technology and Public Policy Program if they are going to compete with fossil CO2 to reach 1000 ppm or higher—quite at the Belfer Center for Science and fuels. And this requires time for research, possible if no mitigation steps are taken— International Affairs at the Harvard for development, for demonstration, and are simply too great to allow adaptation in Kennedy School. He is the Sturgis Hooper ultimately for deployment. any meaningful sense. Professor of environmental science and What are the lessons from these long The nature of the climate experiment engineering at Harvard University and timescales of the carbon cycle, of the climate means that no one truly knows what a teaches an undergraduate course he calls system, and of energy systems? I believe safe level of CO2 really is, apart from the “the climate energy challenge.” Schrag these timescales show us that climate impossible goal of the pre-industrial level served on former President Barack change is likely to persist for centuries and of 280 ppm. Because of the potential for Obama’s Council of Science and millennia. Earth will continue to warm as catastrophe, it seems prudent to ask what Technology from 2009 to 2016.

6 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO BY SERGIO URDAY, REVISTA CARETAS OJOS PROPIOS 1992; OPPOSITE PAGE, BY OSCAR NEGREIROS, OJOS PROPIOS/ILAS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE

Charles C. Davis and Aaron M. Ellison The Brave New World of the Digital Herbarium • Jenna Chaplin and Emily Blair Fragments of Hope Nursery • Elizabeth Donger Fleeing the Weather • Ramón Sánchez, Erika Eitland, Jie Yin and John Spengler Preparing Students to Lead Social Change • Veronica Herrera Beyond Climate Change

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 7 CLIMATE CHANGE

The Brave New World of the Digital Herbarium Mobilizing the Past to Understand the Future

By CHARLES C. DAVIS AND AARON M. ELLISON

HERE IN THE NORTHEAST OF THE UNITED STATES, consequence if temperatures remain Studying phenology and documenting spring will soon be upon us, pulling us steady and bees emerge to pollinate the phenological change in the tropics is from the darkness and cold of winter’s flowers. But if hard frost returns after remarkably difficult. The extraordinary grip. Spring’s exuberance—singing unseasonable February warmth, either diversity of tropical forests means that and nesting birds returning from their the bees won’t show up at the right time, finding enough individuals of a single wintering grounds in more southerly or the flower’s hidden ovaries will be species can frustrate even the most latitudes, flowers bursting from dormant damaged and fail to produce ripe fruit. seasoned field worker. Imagine this: a buds, leaves expanding in verdant green— These phenological effects of climate soccer-field-sized area of the Brazilian indicate the turning of nature’s internal change matter to us as well; in the rainforest may include more than 650 tree calendar. The timing of these natural Northeast alone, revenues from apples species, which is more than the different events—what biologists call phenology—is can exceed one billion dollars. kinds of trees than can grow in all of deeply tied to climate. And phenological Canada and the United States combined. observations are revealing that spring PHENOLOGY IN THE TROPICS: And in the rainforest, most of those species now starts much earlier than it did in the A MISSING PIECE OF THE are likely to be represented by fewer than past. Every species responds differently to CLIMATE-CHANGE PUZZLE five individual trees, hardly a large enough climate change, but the responses of most Biologists who study the impacts of species remain unknown. climate change have observed consistent One of the ways we are beginning to changes in phenological events in the lives understand the effects of climate change is of many plants, insects and larger animals. through the study of botanical collections, But most of these observations have been whether in the traditional context of made only in the last few decades, most museum collections or groundbreaking frequently for trees, and predominantly digital herbaria. These collections in the United States and western Europe. represent a new hope of documenting There is much less observational evidence and understanding nature, and how it linking phenology and climate change in may be altered irrevocably by climate the tropics, which is home to the lion’s share change. They help us track phenological of Earth’s biological diversity. For example, responses, whether in frosty New England there are more than 14,000 species of trees or sweltering Brazil. in the rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, the “lungs” of our planet. PHENOLOGY AS A TOOL FOR UNDERSTANDING SPECIES RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE These phenological responses—or the lack thereof—have tangible effects on an individual’s ability to reproduce and even the persistence of its species. Flowering of apple and peach trees, for example, is closely tied to winter chilling and spring temperatures; unseasonably warm spring months can trigger earlier flower production. That may be of relatively little

8 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS, ABOVE, BY AARON M. ELLISON. OPPOSITE PAGE; TOP PHOTO BY KYLE G. DEXTER. BOTTOM PHOTO BY AARON M. ELLISON. CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE

sample size from which to draw robust a large role in regulating phenological may have unexpectedly dramatic effects on conclusions. responses of both temperate and tropical phenology. Some evidence also suggests Although rainforests get most of the plants, but in the frostless tropics, small that temperature, precipitation and solar attention of scientists and nonscientists changes or subtle variation in temperatures irradiation may interact in particular ways alike, they are only one part of the rich at certain times of the year, or even during diversity of the tropics. Brazil’s Atlantic previously uncommon El Niño events, to coastal forests are another biodiversity trigger bursts of flowering or fruiting. hotspot, as are the tepuis, the table-top Overcoming these and other challenges mountains bordering Venezuela and the requires much more data than are available Guayanas that were the inspiration for from individual, idiosyncratic field studies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World. And To bridge this gap, we have partnered with then there are the hot, dry grasslands of Brazilian colleagues to mine a treasure the cerrado and the southern temperate trove of data that has rarely been explored regions dominated by “southern pines,” for this purpose. which are not anything like our northern- hemisphere pines, but are trees in their HERBARIUM SPECIMENS AS own family, the Auricariaceae (which A SOLUTION includes the familiar monkey-puzzle tree, It is estimated that nearly 360 million Auricaria araucana). pressed and dried specimens of plants and The origin of Brazil’s remarkable fungi are secured behind the closed doors diversity remains an open question, but of herbaria around the world (Photo D). hypotheses include unique ecological For example, at the Harvard University dynamics in climatically benign tropical Herbaria—the largest university-affiliated environments, the ancient age of the herbarium in the world—we care for about tropics that has allowed plenty of time 5.5 million herbarium specimens. Botanists for new species to evolve, and the climatic have been collecting specimens for herbaria extremes associated with dramatic since before the time of Linnaeus, who topography that have allowed different established in the mid-1700s our system species to evolve in isolation from one of naming species. Herbarium specimens, another. Sadly, large-scale agriculture and forestry with nonnative species (Photo C), This page: Caxiuanã is one of the last refuges mining and human population growth are in Brazil of the majestic tauari tree (Couratari destroying this diversity before much of it guianensis), which has been exploited exten- can even be described. sively for its high-quality wood. Like other Finally, physiological linkages between trees in the Brazil-nut family (Lecythidaceae), climate and phenology have been little flowers of the tauari fruits are pollinated by large bees, and its nuts are eaten by parrots, studied in the tropics. Temperature plays monkeys and many other canopy-dwelling animals. The hyperdiverse Brazilian cer- rado—one of the world’s largest producers Opposite page, left: The Amazon rainforest of livestock and agricultural products—is in- at the 1,158 square-mile Caxiuanã National creasingly threatened by conversion to forest Forest in Pará, between the Xingu and Anapu plantations, which often include the planting Rivers. Established in 1961 and accessible of nonnative species, such as Eucalyptus (in only by boat, Caxiuanã is the oldest National background). Photograph taken in northern Forest in Brazil, and in addition to its unpar- Minas Gerais state(Photo C) The Harvard Uni- alleled biodiversity, it is home to more than versity Herbaria, with more than 5.5 million 100,000 people. Caxiuanã is managed by specimens, is the largest university-affiliated the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity herbarium in the world. Each of the thou- Conservation. The Ferreira Penna Scientific sands of compact-shelving cabinets holds Station (Estação Científica Ferreira Penna) is thousands of specimens dating back to the located in the middle of the National Forest early 17th century (Photo D). Charles Davis, and hosts a number of international research Director of the Harvard University Herbaria, projects on rainforest biology, ecology and uses the herbarium collections to study the the effects of climate change on tropical evolution of plants and their responses to biodiversity and ecosystem processes. environmental change. (Photo F) Photograph by Aaron M. Ellison.

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and similar mounted specimens of as Harvard’s Museum of Comparative curated collections are in the United insects, skins of birds, and skeletons of Zoology, are essential for describing species States and Europe, from where, for many animals stored in museums such and characterizing where they live. centuries, scientists have traveled to These specimens, and the field data tropical countries, collected specimens to associated with them, are the basis not document their rich biological diversity, only for the Linnaean categorization of and returned with these materials to nature, but also for untangling the intricate their home institutions for cataloging and details of molecular biology in model plant further study. Documenting and analyzing species like Arabidopsis thaliana and Brazilian plant diversity, for example, has reconstructing the evolutionary history of for decades involved traveling to herbaria humans. When studying these collections in Cambridge, St. Louis, New York or (Photo F) it is hard not to appreciate the London rather than to Brazil itself. This efforts of the countless individuals who has been true especially for studies of have scaled mountains, forded rivers historical collections from the early days (Photo G), been stung by ants (Photo H), of botanical exploration, which include preyed on by leeches, and spent long days the first-named “type specimens” and under tropical suns and rainstorms to help that document diversity in years prior these collections grow and thrive. to urbanization and large-scale resource extraction. TOWARDS A GLOBAL RESEARCH For centuries, these collections and COMMONS their associated data have remained Just as phenology has been studied largely off-limits, accessible only to small more in the global north than in museum staffers who can accommodate the world’s tropics, the geographic academic visitors or send loans to distribution of herbaria and zoological researchers via global post. But all of this collections is uneven. Most large, well- is changing rapidly with the emergence of new technologies and synergies between biologists, computer scientists and engineers. Digitization of museum specimens is creating a global, virtual museum, whose millions of specimens are available online for anyone to view and study. Digitization involves scanning or photographing specimens in a collection and digitally transcribing the “metadata” associated with them. The specimens themselves are useless without these metadata—information about the specimen, including its scientific name (and changes in its name as understanding of its place on nature’s family tree has grown), who collected it, when, where, and why it was collected, and other useful natural history information. Herbarium specimens also are a rich source of data about phenology and climate change. The

Top Photo: An arboreal nest of Azteca char- tifex at Caxiuanã can contain more than one million aggressive, stinging ants (Photo H). Bottom Photo: Rainforests throughout the world are dissected by rivers and streams, both perennial and seasonal (Photo G).

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For Brazil, digitization on phenology and climate change of also effectively repatriates incomparable size and global reach. its plant biodiversity. Since Just as the 15th- and 16th-century the early 2000s, the Rio explorers mobilized sailing ships and Botanic Garden and its the resources of kings to document the director, Rafaela Forzza, world’s biodiversity, we are mobilizing have spearheaded Reflora, the virtual resources of Reflora and a global effort, centered in other digital herbaria around the Brazil, to digitize Brazil’s world with Big Data analytical tools botanical biodiversity. to embark on a grand experiment Reflora began with aimed at understanding phenology and European and American phenological change in the tropics. Our herbaria and was later first effort is a multi-institutional one, expanded to Brazilian spanning three institutions besides herbaria, each digitizing Harvard (Universidade Federal da and aggregating their own Bahia, Universidade Estadual de Santa collections. Like many Cruz, and the Jardim Botánico do Rio partnering non-Brazilian de Janeiro) and a number of faculty with institutions, the Harvard expertise in computer science, ecology, University Herbaria has evolution, and education. And just as virtually repatriated all its the early explorers made new discoveries Brazilian plant specimens. in the “New World,” so too are today’s virtual explorers discovering the new NEW TOOLS, NEW patterns and processes of our rapidly DIRECTIONS, NEW changing world. UNDERSTANDING As it nears completion, Charles C. Davis (http://www.people. Reflora now includes fas.harvard.edu/~ccdavis/) is Profes- A specimen of Scirpus subterminalis collected on Septem- more than three million sor of Organismic and Evolutionary ber 15, 1858, at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, by images and associated Biology at Harvard University and Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s Herbarium is part of the metadata. As an open- Director of the Harvard University Harvard University Herbaria. (Photo 1) access virtual herbarium Herbaria. He is an expert on phylo- specimens often include the different life developed and supported by more genetic applications to questions of stages of plants—buds, flowers, fruits— than 400 Brazilian botanists and plant evolution, including climate which, when linked with local climatic biodiversity specialists, Reflora is change, biogeography, and molecular data can reveal how species have been fast becoming the go-to resource for biology. This spring he is teaching a affected by past changes in climate. studying Brazilian plant diversity and course on plant diversity and evolu- Because the past is the key to its relationship to climate. Our own tion that includes sending the students understanding the future, institutions work has demonstrated that herbarium on a research trip to Brazil as part of throughout the world are digitizing their specimens collected in Massachusetts the course. collections and mobilizing them online. In faithfully capture phenology and its northern countries, federal governments association with climate stretching back Aaron M. Ellison (http://harvardfor- are supporting this effort, often in nearly 150 years (Photo I). We have est.fas.harvard.edu/aaron-ellison) is partnership with private donors. In the also worked with computer scientists the Senior Research Fellow in Ecology United States, for example, the Mellon to develop CrowdCurio, a software at Harvard University and the author Foundation was instrumental in funding platform to engage citizen-scientists in of A Primer of Ecological Statistics, A the digitization of type specimens in major the identification of critical phenological Field Guide to the Ants of New Eng- herbaria, including those at Harvard. In stages on specimens. This large-scale land, and Vanishing Point. He studies Brazil, where federal funding for scientific crowd-sourcing of phenological data- the disassembly and reassembly of eco- research has been slashed in recent years, collection has demonstrated that non- logical systems in New England and the petroleum giant Petrobras and the expert citizen scientists can contribute to abroad, and explores the contribution multinational cosmetics firm L’Oréal, scientific research efforts alongside highly of ants in the Brazilian Amazon to the among others, have supported these efforts. trained botanists; the result is datasets global carbon cycle.

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Above: Exploring the reef in Belize; Opposite page top: Growing juvenile staghorn on nursery in Belize. School of juvenile parrot fish, Belize.

12 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS EMILY BLAIR AND JENNA CHAPLIN CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE

Fragments of Hope Nursery Protecting the Coastline in Belize By JENNA CHAPLIN AND EMILY BLAIR

of Hope coral nursery is a good example of these efforts. Based in Placencia, seven coral nurseries extend throughout the barrier reef and within the lagoon. We visited the nursery at Laughing Bird Caye, a six-year-old project. Fragments of Hope grows Staghorn (Acropora cervicornis), Elkhorn (Acropora palmata), and their hybrid (Acropora prolifera) coral species in its nursery, transplanting them later onto the reef. Although the main goal of Fragments of Hope is to increase biodiversity on the reef, this research has also driven home the importance of looking below the water to reframe the coastal strategies that could be employed in the face of dynamic weather and rising sea levels. The name Fragments of Hope comes from the coral fragments cultivated in the nursery. Initial fragments, two to three inches long, that are particularly resistant to coral bleaching and disease, come from nearby reefs. The coral genotypes are pinpointed at the University of Miami in order to identify what makes them disease and stress resistant. The nursery, located on the protected, leeward side of the Caye at a depth of -15ft, makes use of metal frames, concrete “cookies” and ropes to support the variety of corals as they grow. After growing for three years, the corals will reach six inches and be ready to plant on the reef in one of five study locations around Laughing Bird Caye. Researchers come from around the world to study these plots. The reef is in an ideal location inside the Laughing Bird Caye National Park. The coral nursery is home to some of the healthiest stands of Acropora corals in the area, if not the region. This effort draws many tourists to the reef and encourages locals to respect the habitat. When we visited the caye after Hurricane Earl, we could see hurricane wave damage. Some corals were broken off and others rolled upside down. Carne reassured us that when she began the nursery five years ago, she too was distressed at overturned or broken coral fragments, but the corals are adapted to this experience and many fragments resprout asexually, and form new stands. Literally, Fragments of Hope.

THE DRIVE TO PROTECT THE COASTLINE IN BELIZE doesn’t end at the Emily Blair and Jenna Chaplin are graduates of the Masters water’s edge: the most important need for protection can be out of Landscape Architecture program at the Graduate School of of sight, under the crashing surf. Reefs play a critical role in the Design. Emily is originally from Vancouver, Canada and has a reduction of wave energy. The Mesoamerican barrier reef off the background in Biology and Jenna is from the Bahamas with a coast of Belize is also dotted with cayes, atolls and mangrove background in Fine Arts. Both Emily and Jenna have returned islands that rise above the sea. We traveled to Placencia, Belize, to their hometowns after graduating in 2017, and Jenna is now and saw what a positive difference these reefs made along Belize’s planning on getting her Coral Nursery Dive certification in Caribbean coast. order to be involved in local reef restoration programs. Different strategies have been tried around the world to Contact info: Jenna Chaplin - [email protected] Emily protect the corals that make up the reefs. Lisa Carne’s Fragments Blair - [email protected]

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Fleeing the Weather Migration in the Time of Climate Change

By ELIZABETH DONGER

THE STREETS OF SANTIAGO K ARE QUIET. THIS village in the highlands of southwestern Bolivia bustled throughout centuries of conquest and expansion, but the mayor is now one of the few remaining residents. He says most of the young have migrated across the border to Chile in search of work, some to other towns in Bolivia. Eighty percent of families have left since 2015. Multiple seasons of drought have decimated the area’s quinoa crops and dried up the river. For these farming families, there was simply no way to make ends meet. The term “climate migrant,” bringing together two of today’s most timely and fear-ridden debates, typically conjures images of people forcibly displaced by hurricanes, floods or rising sea levels. These issues have increasing political, academic and social visibility across Latin America. People like the residents of Santiago K have used migration to adapt to changing climate for centuries. A study in the January 2011 issue of Science connected periods of low temperature in the early 17th and 19th centuries to “sustained settlement abandonment during the Thirty Years’ War and the modern migrations from Europe to America.” individuals, most significantly, refugees. alternative response, allowing some But today climate change is impacting And refugee law, designed for the citizens to legally emigrate and work with migration patterns across Latin America displacement challenges of the 1950s, minimal requirements. These frameworks and the Caribbean in accelerated and does not apply. It guarantees refuge to can be useful more broadly, but stand to diverse ways. those fleeing individual persecution on be tested in the coming years. The most International law does not guarantee the basis of their race, religion, nationality, visible examples of climate change’s a “right to migrate” for these people political opinion or membership in a impact on migration are sudden-onset fleeing the weather. States can choose to particular social group. disasters leading to large collective provide short term humanitarian visas Latin America’s existing frameworks evacuations. In 2016 alone, an estimated but are obliged to provide safe haven for regional free-movement lay the 1.8 million people were displaced across only to certain categories of vulnerable groundwork for an effective and humane Latin America and the Caribbean

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home country if possible. But, as opportunities diminish in a country for safety, education, health and well-being, it is deeply human to look for these things further afield. How should all these people be classified at the border? It is difficult to attribute any one event to climate change, and difficult to attribute migration to any one cause. Santiago K’s residents left Bolivia because of the drought, but also to find ways to meet their mounting debts: the quinoa industry has suffered from the fluctuating tastes of U.S. markets and competing production from Peru. So are they climate migrants, or something else? This label is subjective. This complexity makes it difficult to predict the scale of (Hurricane series), 2011, 19.5 in x 25.5 in, cut paper, collage. Clockwise from upper left; the problem, and think about Carmela_Gallardo, Luis_Gallardo, Carmen_Gallardo, Cynthia_Gallardo. long-term, practical policy responses beyond disaster by hurricanes, floods or mudslides. access to water, land, and employment. management. Evacuations due to rising sea levels are The poor and marginalized carry this Across the continent, a number of another high profile example: in Panama, burden disproportionally. Resource regional and sub-regional platforms, plans are underway for the exodus of the scarcity and inequality also have well- working groups and coalitions have begun Guna indigenous people from the San documented links to violence of all kinds. to address the effects of climate change on Blas archipelago, as the water begins to Examples include civil unrest over fresh migration. Although inevitably somewhat swallow their homes. water scarcity in Peru and Bolivia; the disjointed, these efforts are remarkable in At the same time, the long-term effects murder of environmental activists in bringing together players across multiple of climate change on migration patterns, Brazil; and spikes in intimate partner sectors–climate change, disaster risk as witnessed in Santiago K, remain poorly violence in Nicaragua in the aftermath reduction, environmental protection, understood and under-addressed. Less of Hurricane Mitch. All these complex human rights, humanitarian response, visibly, the slow-onset impacts of climate factors impact individual migration migration and security. Their focus to change both directly and indirectly drive decisions. As environmental law expert date has largely been on short-onset decisions to uproot. Land and forest Benoit Mayer has written, “the physical climate disasters, both on risk reduction degradation, loss of biodiversity, and effects of climate change produce series of and response. drought are widespread examples. A social effects which…extend ad infinitum In November 2016, the Regional recent World Food Program survey of and ad absurdum in time and space.” Conference on Migration (RCM) convened migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazilian law professor Lilian eleven countries from across the Americas Honduras found that of six main reasons Yamamoto and colleagues, reviewing to adopt a best practice guide on this issue. to emigrate, the highest percentage of available literature on environmental The guide provides non-binding direction respondents reported “no food” as being change and migration in Latin America, to member countries on how existing law, most important: a multi-year drought and found that most displacements occur policy and practice in the Americas can 2015-2016 El Niño in the so-called “Dry internally, towards urban centers, and address the needs of persons displaced Corridor” of these countries has left 3.2 usually last a short time. This truth is across borders in the context of disasters. million without enough to eat. often omitted from current migration It advocates for flexible application of Climate change restricts and disrupts debates: most people prefer to stay in their existing migration categories, granting

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Thirteen-year-old Luis Lulo Granados took this photo of a Peruvian neighborhood.

of humanitarian visas, and temporary suspension of return to disaster-affected countries. The effects on regional responsibility-sharing and cooperation have already been positive. The South American Conference of Migration is now developing a similar document. But what about those displaced by the slow-onset effects of climate change? In a review of the RCM Guide, Walter Kälin and David Cantor write that there is “little State practice” on this front in Latin America. Some political and academic actors are advocating for the creation of new migration laws that specifically protect “climate migrants.” Without consensus around whom exactly the term encompasses, this is a Sisyphean task. Proyecto Reserva Biosfera Huascaran, Minera Antamina, in Chile. Even if the terms were clear, questions

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As migration lawyer Diego Acosta points Evacuations due to rising sea levels are another out, “South America is now at a crucial crossroads on regional mobility” and high profile example: in Panama, plans are must “take further action to solidify a free underway for the exodus of the Guna indigenous mobility scheme in the near future.” Mayer writes in The Concept of Climate people from the San Blas archipelago, as the water Migration that “despite its essential flaws, begins to swallow their homes. the concept of climate migration has…a particularly strong political currency.” This currency should be used to advocate for arise about prioritizing categories of of migrants: they do not languish in humane policy for people using migration migrants, thus creating more meaningless detention centers or suffer needlessly from to adapt to the slow-onset effects of hierarchies between categories of the inability to meet their family’s basic climate change, as well as for people “deserving” and “undeserving” migrants. needs. This approach also allows migrants fleeing sudden climate disasters. In some Latin America’s existing free- to help fill key labor market shortages, quarters, it is already being used to stir movement frameworks position the send back remittances and bring newly up anxiety around floods of newcomers region well to respond to the migration acquired skills, knowledge, networks and and to militarize borders, as documented effects of slow-onset climate change. The links to new markets. in Todd Miller’s book Storming the Wall. 2002 MERCOSUR (Mercado Común Forecasts for the number of people Latin America’s crucial experiment in del Sur) Residence Agreement permits displaced globally by climate-related free movement needs further study. How nationals of Member and Associate events by the year 2050 range from 25 many Bolivians from Santiago K were States—including Bolivia, Chile, million to one billion. Unsurprisingly, able to take advantage of the opportunity Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and experts have questioned the accuracy to move to Chile? How did it impact their Suriname, with Venezuela temporarily of these projections for a phenomenon opportunities and decisions, and those suspended—to reside and work in any without a clear definition. But it is of the families they left behind? Did the of these places for a period of two years. reasonable to expect that numbers will Chilean state and economy benefit? There are no economic requirements, only be large. According to the International Firm evidence about this group and proof of citizenship and a clean criminal Organization for Migration (IOM), intra- locality would have implications for record for the previous five years. The regional migration just in South America migration policy outside this regional permit offers the right to equal working went up 11 percent between 2010 and 2015. bloc. No one is taking bets that the conditions, family reunification, and Latin America’s remarkable United States will adopt a similar open- access to education for children. After commitment to the principles of open doors policy for Central Americans fleeing two years, the permit can be transformed borders and freedom of movement dates the Dry Corridor. Latin America’s free- into permanent residency, contingent back to the 19th century, when most movement regime is premised in large on meeting requirements for financial countries gained independence. Yet, as part on shared identity, as in Europe. sufficiency. is evident all over the world, increasing Nevertheless, evidence of the benefits of The Andean Community (CAN) has numbers of new arrivals are often met this approach—giving people the right to also adopted a migration instrument to with popular backlash and heavily legal residence, work, and access to basic facilitate free movement of select workers secured borders. An influx of Haitian services—could be used to advocate for from member states Bolivia, Colombia, immigrants to Chile is fuelling a debate increased labor mobility pathways. Ecuador and Peru. Both of these blocs there over racism and xenophobia. In Despite efforts to mitigate and prepare participate in the sub-continental process January 2017, Argentina’s President Macri for climate change, emigration from of the Union of South American Nations issued a decree making it easier to deport places like Santiago K will become an (UNASUR), a forum with the explicit immigrants and restrict their entry. increasingly familiar reality. This model aim of facilitating “cooperation on issues These free-movement agreements of response deserves our full attention. of migration” and ultimately developing a are also currently inconsistently applied South American citizenship. by each state, as per their political Elizabeth Donger is a Research Associ- These frameworks allow people to use and social climate; for example, more ate at the Harvard FXB Center for migration as an adaptation tool. Residents progressively than required in Uruguay, Health and Human Rights. She works on of Santiago K who moved across the but more restrictively in Chile. Unlike issues of distress migration, child protec- border from Bolivia to Chile could get in the European Union, the power tion and climate change with a focus on access to legal residence, work and basic held by the MERCOSUR and CAN is Latin America and Asia. services. This approach respects the rights intergovernmental, not supranational.

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Preparing Students to Lead Social Change Advancing The UN Sustainable Development Goals By RAMÓN SÁNCHEZ, ERIKA EITLAND, JIE YIN AND JOHN SPENGLER

Yet economic losses from natural hazards have increased to as much as $300 billion each year, with disproportionate burdens on the poorest and most vulnerable communities. Water stress is among these challenges and requires efficient ways of protecting and using water, especially for food production. For this generation of young socially conscious students, the SDGs are becoming a “north star” to break with the shibboleth of the status quo. They see themselves as citizens of the world anxious to have relevant professional careers. Ramón Sánchez and Jack Spengler at the Center for Health and Global Environment, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, recognizing the need for immersive educational experiences, collaborated with Professor Carlos Students huddled in their favorite coffee shop powered by caffeine and reliable wifi. Vinajera of Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY) to craft a winter session FAR FROM BOSTON’S WINDOWLESS LECTURE world use solid fuels for domestic energy course in Mérida, Mexico. Through this halls and projector screens, the small needs, however alternative energy sources living case study students experienced Yucatecan town of Santa Elena became also have important cultural, historical, firsthand the immediate impacts of a dirt-paved classroom rooted in culture and health implications. During a two- changing environmental and social and global change. As the students of week course, this single afternoon with conditions as well as the consequences of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public the Mayan community provided a living inaction. Health course, Social and Sustainable Innovation Driven by The Sustainable example of why we need to understand Development Goals (EH210), walked the and find solutions to the social, economic, THE SETTING narrow streets lined by indigenous and educational and environmental inequities As one of the largest cities in Mexico colonial architecture, the complex history of our world as they relate to natural and the capital of the state of Yucatán, of the Yucatan was quickly illustrated to disasters and climate change. Mérida is vibrant and notably diverse all of us. In 2015, more than 150 countries with more than 60% of the population Our “abuelita” for the afternoon, committed to the 2030 Agenda for of indigenous Mayan descent. Mérida weathered yet ever-smiling, told us Sustainable Development, which includes is an education hub with 16 universities the future would also feature great the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and some of the best performing public environmental and social changes, which (SDGs) aimed at ending poverty, hunger schools in the nation—well placed to had already shaped the livelihoods of and inequality, and building strong develop innovative solutions. As a public her children. As her hands methodically institutions and partnerships that lead to health course, EH210 took advantage of shaped the perfect corn tortilla and placed environmental action to improve access to this intellectual base to find socially just it on a three-stone fire, her small hut filled health and education. The 2017 UN report and health-promoting business ventures. with a distinctive smoke. At Harvard, we showed promising progress with a 17% Beyond its human capital, the city had learned that three billion people in the reduction in extreme poverty since 1999. and surrounding regions provided

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many examples of sustainable solutions restore culture, ancient architecture and to the end of the Mayan civilization. Local and leadership. For example, heading indigenous communities. To the east, the archaeologists discussed how prolonged eastward, we learned that the Dzilam Chichén Itzá showed us a great example of drought, overpopulation and deforestation Bravo Wind Farm currently has twenty- how climate change played an important led to the collapse of the scientifically eight 330-foot tall wind turbines under role in the Maya’s downfall. advanced Mayan civilization, despite construction and will provide renewable Within Mérida itself, students walked attempts to adapt to these new conditions. energy to approximately 32,000 homes the streets in search of examples of bio- While the experiences we examined in the area. Forty minutes north, the port philic design, which incorporates natural spanned centuries, classroom-based manager of Progreso explained the key elements into the built environment in teaching highlighted 21st-century challenges of receiving up to 18,000 tons of an urban milieu to better understand techniques and methodologies necessary products along the world’s second longest how design contributes to climate change for practical product/service development pier. To the west, the ancient Mayan city adaptation and sustainability. Lastly, with and implementation. Students got of Uxmal and Santa Elena highlighted the support of UADY and Fundación firsthand experience searching for the local efforts to not only preserve but Plan Estratégico de Yucatán (a non-profit patents for pre-existing technologies and championing sustainable development performing assessments of community in Merida for twenty years), skill-driven, vulnerability and climate change resiliency. discussion-based classroom sessions To become effective entrepreneurs, became possible. Their partnership students were also exposed to advanced ensured our students received a holistic market intelligence techniques, methods toolkit to design and implement timely, of harnessing creativity when developing relevant solutions. solutions for local problems, intellectual property and technology frameworks, THE PROGRAM risk-benefit analysis and risk management During a period of ten days, students techniques. The rigorous agenda turned creative ideas into robust business culminated with students, powered by plans. The course set the stage with caffeine and reliable wifi, huddling in their observational and informed experiences favorite coffee shop on Paseo de Montejo, not pedagogically available in Boston. a colonial home transformed into a Determined to illustrate the deep Starbucks—another sign of the changing connection between human health and times. Their ideation and collaboration global environmental change, Sánchez and often sparked critical discussion. How Spengler decided to go back 1,100 years do we have the greatest environmental impact? Is there a more sustainable alternative than what we are proposing? What are the local economic and policy challenges we need to overcome? Additionally, we started some research to evaluate the health and efficiency of the local innovation ecosystem in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexican States of Quintana Roo, Yucatan and Campeche) to try to enhance educational, financial and legislative frameworks so social and sustainable entrepreneurs in the area may eventually have similar innovation support systems and investors like the ones found in major innovation hubs like Boston, New York and Silicon Valley.

THE STUDENTS The magic of the course was the students themselves. Multidisciplinary, Above: A dog in Mérida; Bottom: Limestone Carvers. enthusiastic, collaborative and solution-

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driven, they were not just academics but com) featuring more than eighty critical problem-solvers. The Boston graduate analyses focused on the intersection of Ramón Sánchez, Erika Eitland, Jie Yin student contingent included three from the SDGs, climate action and innovative and John Spengler are at the Depart- the Tufts University Fletcher School solutions. The diversity of the student ment of Environmental Health, Harvard of International Affairs, four from the body is reflected in the topics discussed, T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public which makes the blog a useful resource Health, one from the Harvard Kennedy and engaging read for anyone interested Ramón Sánchez is a certified profes- School and two from the Harvard Graduate in sustainable development. sional in sustainability, renewable School of Design. Our Mexico-based Ultimately, six technical business plans energies, green manufacturing tech- students included architects, engineers, were submitted covering issues related niques and technology innovation. He is social workers, lawyers, economists, to sustainable tourism, recycling, urban director of the Sustainable Technologies archaeologists and directors of business forest preservation, occupational hazards and Health Program in the Center for incubators from several local universities in local stone carving communities and Health and the Global Environment at such as the Universidad Autónoma de coastal protection and revitalization. the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Yucatán, Universidad Anáhuac-Mayab, Within these documents, students Health (HSPH). Instituto Tecnológico de Mérida and described their business models, how Universidad Modelo en Mérida. From the they would reach early customers, who Erika Eitland is a doctoral candidate beginning of the course, students joined would make up their management in the Department of Environmental forces and formed multidisciplinary and team, outline expected revenue streams Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of multinational groups to develop a business and establish how their venture would Public Health and received her MPH plan that targeted one or several SDGs. overcome current inefficiencies and at Columbia University. Her research The Mexican students provided challenges. On the last day of class, focuses on the health impacts of cli- profound understanding of the local students gave 15-minute pitches of their mate change as well as the adaptive and context, whether it was through the venture illustrating how deeply they had protective role of the built environment, non-profits they led or a practical considered the ramifications of their work. specifically in elementary and secondary understanding of the occupational hazards Arguably, the real metric of schools. faced by small communities of limestone success for EH210 is the profound carvers. We recognized that deep-learning relationship formed among our students. Jie Yin is a doctoral student at the could be best achieved through a co- Collectively, the students deepened their Department of Environmental Health, creation process of shared discovery and understanding of the environmental Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public knowledge. Therefore, it was no surprise determinants of health, recognized the Health (HSPH). He holds a Master of to the teaching staff that collaboration shared expertise of their colleagues Science degree in Environmental Health became an iterative process. By week two, and left empowered to tackle social from HSPH and a Master of Urban Plan- students had begun to restructure their and environmental challenges that ning and Design from Tongji University. groups to reflect their interests, expertise will shape their careers as they work to His research interests lie in the cross- and heightened understanding of the local achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable disciplinary field of urban planning and context. Ideation amongst team members Development. public health, including assessing the would result in multilingual animated Written into each sidewalk tile is health impacts of biophilic design and discussions that challenged each group “Merida para todos” or “Merida for environmental health risk factors shaped member to think about feasibility, metrics everybody,” a constant reminder why by urban planning and policy. of success and impact of their proposal. courses like these are not only important but necessary to foster global leaders. It John Spengler is the Akira Yamaguchi THE RESPONSE is not about finding the solutions for the Professor of Environmental Health The goal of EH210 was to provide lucky few, but challenging our methods and Human Habitation at the Harvard students with the necessary tools to create of learning to be more inclusive and T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His a socially equitable, environmentally addressing key disparities impacting research assesses population exposures conscious and health-oriented business communities globally. The path towards a to contaminants that occur in homes, plan that would be ready to pitch to healthy, more equitable planet may appear offices, schools and during transit, as potential investors. However, the response a formidable task, but if we have a shared well as in the outdoor environment. of the students was more profound. The commitment to promote innovative transformative and investigative power knowledge generation amongst our (For more information about EH210 of students was captured in the class blog students, professors and universities, the please contact Dr. Sanchez at rsanchez@ (socialsustainableinnovation.wordpress. solutions are within our grasp. hsph.harvad.edu)

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Merida for everybody.

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Sewage is an environmental problem that has direct impacts on ecosystems. Beyond Climate Change The Latin American Sewage Crisis and Environmental Injustice By VERONICA HERRERA

CARMEN OFFERED TO SHOW US AROUND THE Inflamable, a shantytown in Buenos us that last year her two children had neighborhood. We turned onto unpaved Aires, Argentina, enterprising residents been diagnosed with lead poisoning. streets that housed surprisingly dissimilar had improvised a solution to the lack of Her house sat adjacent to the Matanza- buildings. Homes made of brick and sewers in their neighborhood by running Riachuelo River, a waterway that traverses mortar with finished lawns and paved hoses underground to take wastewater the capital city and has made the top ten entryways sat next to corrugated tin from their bathrooms to open lagoons a list of the most contaminated places in the houses with plastic bags for windows. Yet few meters away. The result was green world. they all shared something in common: lagoons composed of raw sewage and Carmen has never heard of climate they were surrounded by lagoons full strewn with plastic bottles, car parts and change. The environmental problems of garbage and human waste. In Villa bags full of kitchen scraps. Carmen told she faces are not directly linked to

22 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS COURTESY OF VERONICA HERRERA CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE

greenhouse emissions, yet they are shared by millions. According to the The largest contributor of water pollution World Health Organization, one out of four people dies every year from living or is untreated wastewater, a fast growing, working near toxic pollution. Ninety-two global problem that has been neglected by percent of these deaths occur in middle or low-income countries, where the majority the international community because its of the global population lives. A 2017 determinants are largely local and not linked to Lancet Commission report estimated that pollution causes losses of US$4.6 trillion the drivers of climate change. per year—6.2 percent of global economic output. While some forms of pollution, policymakers and even academics who diarrheal diseases make up more than such as air pollution, are closely aligned work on environmental issues. four percent of the global disease with determinants of greenhouse emissions But sewage pollution, even without burden. The World Health Organization and share common solutions, other forms, climate change, is a pressing environmental estimates that approximately 58 percent such as water pollution, are not. policy problem. The United Nations reports of all cases of diarrhea in low and middle- The largest contributor of water that severe pathogen pollution (from fecal income countries are attributable to the pollution is untreated wastewater, a contamination) affects one third of all environment, and they account for 20 fast growing, global problem that has rivers globally and presents health risks percent of global deaths for children been neglected by the international from drinking contaminated water, under the age of five. community because its determinants are bathing, laundering and other household These figures do not include, however, largely local and not linked to the drivers activities. Severe organic pollution from exposure to toxic contamination that of climate change. Yet environmental herbicides, pesticides and industrial many low-income urban communities degradation from wastewater pollution compounds also pour into many rivers. face from manufacturing firms’ release is global in reach, impacting most of the In Latin America, about one out of every of heavy metals, chemicals and other world’s population and ecosystems. Less three rivers is polluted by wastewater nonbiodegradable pollutants into than 20 percent of global wastewater— and solid waste (the region produces waterways. Villa Inflamable is one including residential, industrial and 160 million tons of waste annually, or 12 extreme example—it surrounds a Shell agricultural water—receives any form percent of the world’s waste). petrochemical processing plant that of treatment; this figure is only eight Sewage as an environmental problem transmits soil, air and water toxins. It is percent in low-income countries. In Latin has direct impacts on ecosystems. The not uncommon for manufacturing firms America, approximately 22 percent of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to be located near residential communities wastewater receives treatment, but some reports that 60 percent of global in Latin American cities. Residents and studies show that the total percentage of ecosystem services, on which many social activists I interviewed in Buenos Aires and wastewater being managed sustainably and economic activities depend, are Bogotá recounted cases marked by various may be as low as 11 percent. being degraded. Agricultural practices, health problems, such as gastrointestinal The spread of the global climate population growth and industrialization illness, lead poisoning, skin lesions and change agenda has coincided with the are creating excessive nitrogen and cancers. As health crises mount, many upsurge in the urban sewage crises in phosphorus dumping into waterways. government officials suppress information Latin America. Unplanned urbanization The result is toxic algal blooms, or about the link between industrial has skyrocketed in the region; eight out eutrophication, which is the dramatic pollution and human health, hoping to of every 10 people in Latin America now growth of plant biomass, an alarming deflect responsibility and avoid blame. live in cities, a migration accompanied development visible in Villa Inflamable’s Climate change will exacerbate by unregulated industrialization. green lagoons. environmental degradation and toxic Environmental organization leaders I There is an inextricable relationship exposure from the wastewater sector, but interviewed in Colombia and Argentina between ecosystem degradation and the factors that contribute to wastewater stressed the difficult access to international human health. Unmanaged wastewater contamination are not a result of climate financing for sewage contamination is a vector for disease, including typhoid, change. Non-climate change factors such because of international environmental paratyphoid, dysentery, gastroenteritis as aging infrastructure, industrialization foundations’ singular focus on and cholera. More than half of the and population growth will have similar transborder climate change initiatives. hospitalized global population suffers levels of negative environmental impact Indeed, wastewater management has from water-related diseases, and in the short term even outside of climate little appeal to international foundations,

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change scenarios. Better understanding generations. Yet pollution abatement the worst of the environmental problems the unequal distributive impacts presents different distributional tradeoffs. that are headed our way. For the majority of environmental harms associated Environmental degradation associated of low-income residents like Carmen in with wastewater pollution will surely with wastewater, solid waste and toxic Latin America and beyond, that future is underscore political, regulatory and social dumping disproportionately affects low- already here. conflicts related to rapid industrialization income residents who are most likely to and urbanization in Latin America. As live near pollution and most directly suffer Veronica Herrera is Assistant Profes- Victor Hugo noted in Les Miserables its health and economic impacts. Those sor of Political Science at the University (1862), “A sewer is a cynic. It tells everything.” interested in social justice issues would of Connecticut and Visiting Scholar at We need to do a better job of do well to focus on the global wastewater DRCLAS at Harvard University. She distinguishing between drivers of crisis. More attention is urgently needed to is author of Water and Politics: Clien- climate change and other environmental attend to growing pollution in developing telism and Reform in Urban Mexico problems that may have distinct causes countries, which currently account for a (University of Michigan Press, 2017), and consequences. Climate change is often large, and growing, percentage of global and researches and teaches on environ- discussed with respect to its distributional human deaths and the alarming rate of mental politics, development, and cities, over-time tradeoffs—the need for current debilitating ecosystem health. Climate with a focus on Latin America. Find her generations to reduce greenhouse change mitigation is critical, but we do on twitter @veromsherrera or email emissions for the good of future not need to wait decades to experience [email protected].

Above: polluted waters; Opposite page: Osteopilus dominicensis, in Macaya Biosphere Reserve, Massif de la Hotte, Haiti.

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Maria Alessandra Woolson The Melting of Humankind • John Waldron Writing at the End of the World • Gisela Heffes Imagining Climate (and) Change • Patricia Valderrama The Climate-Change Lessons of Andean Literature

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The Melting of Humankind How Art Deepens our Dialogue about Climate Change

By MARIA ALESSANDRA WOOLSON

IMAGINE ONE THOUSAND ICE-FIGURINES covering the steps of Berlin’s Gendarmern- markt Square Concert Hall on a warm September day. Similar scenes had emerged before in cities such as São Paulo, Florence, Havana, Belfast, Tokyo, Paris, Brasilia, Kyoto and Salvador. This artistic installation-cum-urban action titled Monumento Mínimo (Minimum Monument) was the work of Brazilian artist Néle Azevedo. On this occasion, the 73 degrees Fahrenheit temperature turned the melting-men into traceable water marks within thirty minutes and, shortly thereafter, they were gone, leaving no trace of their existence (Azevedo Néle, 2014). It was the year 2009; the same year that Chacaltaya, the Bolivian glacier that had once housed the world’s most elevated ski resort at 17,785 ft., melted away into nothing but a thin stream of water, a full six years before initially predicted. Chacaltaya also represented a precious fresh water resource for the population of La Paz that, in a matter of months, vanished and dramatically hastened It was the year 2009; the same year that Chacaltaya, the expected gradual decrease of the mountainous water source. No one had the Bolivian glacier that had once housed the predicted the accelerating effects of rising world’s most elevated ski resort at 17,785 ft., melted temperatures or the early disappearance of the glacier that forced Bolivia to declare away into nothing but a thin stream of water, six a state of emergency in January 2016 for years before initially predicted. the country’s third most populous city (The Guardian, November 28, 2016). (COP21) or Paris Climate meeting, A powerful environmental thinking Chacaltaya is but one example of to establish a basis for understanding the flows from the often-paradoxical events that drive the international difference of projected impacts and costs experience of Latin America, a region rich community of experts’ urgency to develop between an increase of 1.5°C and 2°C in diverse forms of practical and adaptive new collaborative research models that warming. At the same time, the outcome knowledge embedded in traditional respond to the Special Report on Global of the glacier’s untimely disappearance cultures, one that is still attuned to Warming of 1.5°C (IPCC 2017). The is proof that an ethical perspective is the deeply-rooted wisdom of its many special report was commissioned by the necessary, as it can reveal the central identities, and yet cannot escape its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate role of culture for building the systemic indexes of poverty and inequality, or its Change (IPCC), following the 2015 United capacity required to adapt to changing colonial legacy. The region’s contemporary Nations Conference on Climate Change conditions. artistic representation, such as that of

26 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO: ©NÉLE AZEVEDO-MINIMUM MONUMENT IN SÃO PAULO, MARCH 19, 2016. THROUGH THE LENS OF LITERATURE

PHOTO: MINIMUM MONUMENT BY NÉLE AZEVEDO, BERLIN, SEPTEMBER 2, 2009. PHOTO BY SILVINA DER MAGHERDITCHIA. REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 27 CLIMATE CHANGE

Néle Azevedo, is equally powerful; it is the Environment of Latin America and at the same time are the majority of the as diverse as its peoples and comprises the Caribbean, held in São Paulo, Brazil, world’s poor, would fail to understand a plurality of aesthetic expressions in 2002 (Manifesto). These objectives that this is as much a gender issue as it is and cultural relations. Reading these would coalesce into a manifesto, a Latin a socio-economic and technical one. And artistic and literary 21st-century works American manifesto of Latin American this is where art and the humanities have through the lens of ecocriticism, which environmental thinking that represented the special ability to establish a perspective adopts a humanities perspective to the collective will to understand and that encompasses the full complexity of examine paradoxical aspects of human- respond to the challenges that would socio-ecological challenges. environment interactions, opens a window later be put forth in the SDGs. This was The thousands of faceless tiny men and onto the complexity of present-day the MANIFESTO FOR LIFE in Favor of women sculpted in ice by Néle Azevedo, socio-ecological problems. The resulting an Ethic for Sustainability (UNEP Latin that wandered between the public perspective can facilitate a reevaluation America 2003), or a manifesto of an ethic stairways of cities, states and countries, of environmental problems that reveals in favor of life. and intervened in both their physical their fundamentally ethical nature in and In this light, one could argue that and discursive urban landscapes, have far beyond Latin America. the so-called environmental crisis which continued to spark conversations about The world’s changing climate and afflicts the world today is symptomatic of climate change. Since 2001, the presence of the need to respond to the outcomes of another major crisis: a crisis of modern these works has suspended daily routines, the Paris Climate meeting of 2015 was knowledge. What are the singular transforming the public space in unique also raised from the outset at a summer challenges that climate change poses ways and altering culturally contoured meeting of the U.S. National Council to that knowledge and to our global norms and behavior that we naturalize in on Science and the Environment that modernity? What are the unique ways in our daily life. Azevedo’s arranging of her I attended in June 2017. One of the which Latin American thinking makes 500, 1,000 or 5,000 sculptures is always a meeting’s primary aims was to highlight sense of those challenges? How do these community event. She invites the public to current goals and trends regarding the ways of knowing and making meaning partake in assembling the installation, but future of environmental and sustainability contribute to international conversations surprises the observer with a kind of social work in higher education, including about climate and global change? These happening. The miniature icy bodies what it means to engage this topic in questions define an endeavor that is both are placed in position by volunteers, anticipation of future adaptations. practical and epistemological. Responses often casual passersby, turning each The challenge was not just to establish to that challenge must equally involve sculpture’s placement into something very understanding of complex differences perspectives from the ecological sciences personal—a personal moment of contact between magnitudes of warming, but and the arts and humanities, an assertion with an icy-cold reflection of ourselves to do so within the context of the 2015 that directly aligns with the International that will soon become part of a sea of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Council for Science’s recent assessment anonymity. that underpin the UN 2030 Sustainable of the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Her sculptures and installations, by Development Agenda (UN Sustainable Development Goals, which underscores their very nature as objects, reconfigure Development Goals, 2015). This discourse the necessity of an integrated approach and re-functionalize the space where they exuded an urgency to engage with United for dealing with our changing climate (ICS are placed. But space is hardly neutral. To Nations work, and to creatively and Report, May 2017). intervene in public space is to challenge the collectively identify the kind of research Here, the humanities provide vital limits of that space, and of what is public and collaboration necessary, given a insights of culture, human institutions and of the subjective knowledge stored paucity of peer-reviewed literature upon and practical wisdom. In other words, the in it. Part of that subjective knowledge which to evaluate the difference of impacts humanities provide deep readings of texts that is naturalized in our modern urban and costs between 1.5°C and 2°C warming and signs that enable the interrogation of daily life manifests in an often-indifferent (Liverman, Diana, NCSE summer human values and actions, which in turn behavior toward public spaces that has meeting, 2017). deepen our understanding of the range and become deeply ingrained within society, Here we were, in 2017, looking at a set diversity of human knowledge available to consciously or otherwise. Azevedo is of Sustainable Development Goals that us, enabling us to respond to these critical aware of this social performance when were agreed to in 2015 and delineated issues. For example, an approach to water she situates her melting-men on an urban an agenda for the world in ways that and food access that focused exclusively on monument and metaphorically intercepts seemed to usher in a new rhetoric, management and agro-technical aspects, the site and its memory with a sensory but notably shared the underlying without addressing the fact that women, experience involving ice. For the viewer, rationale of the objectives delivered worldwide, provide approximately eighty the faceless bodies and ephemeral ice at the seventh meeting of Ministers of percent of the world’s food supply and figures soon become a confrontation of

28 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO: OPPOSITE PAGE, MINIMUM MONUMENT IN SÃO PAULO, MARCH 2016, PHOTO BY FANCA CORTEZ THROUGH THE LENS OF LITERATURE

our modern indifference and the fragility of today’s globalized world, including those of our existence, at the same time. They leading to frequent inaction to engage in are also an honest representation of the climate action. The installation functions beauty of the ordinary, which interrogates as a cultural mirror, or a collective cultural the ethics of a contemporary experience reflection of ethics and values. Moreover, that is constantly choreographed in the melting men’s success at making visible relation to consumer images, slogans issues of temporality serves as a reminder and individualistic practices. Azevedo’s of what Rob Nixon has called the “slow Minimum monument reminds us of the violence” of environmental change. forgotten bodies that surround us in a This is a violence that confronts the fast- shared planet, common to us all. paced, detached worldview perpetuated by The dynamic experience with this America and the Caribbean’s Ministers mainstream media, with its discardable art installation begins as the figurines of Environment defined these needs facts once their news value has been melt. The once collective presence of and centered discussion of climate and extracted. It is the violence of “disasters that the thousand turns into the daunting environmental change around ethics: “an are slow-moving and long in the making, disappearance of fallen bodies, as ghostly ethic of knowledge and dialogue among anonymous, starring nobody, attritional figures melt under a watchful audience, fields of knowledge, an ethic for global and of indifferent interest to our image much like Chacaltaya did under eyes citizenship, an ethic of global governance driven world” (Nixon, R. Slow Violence of the Bolivian population. Although and participatory democracy, of peace and and the Environmentalism of the Poor, originally intended to examine the role dialogue for resolving problems, of rights, 2011). When overwhelming evidence of of monuments in the contemporary city, justice and democracy for the commons the ecological disruptions, climate change, Azevedo’s ice sculptures now speak of and the common good” (Manifesto). resource depletion, and urban growth global warming as a threat to life: It explained our current climate and causes a devastating alarm that leaves the public’s imagination with a sense of the ice gave poetic support to what environmental crisis from an ethical powerlessness, experiences such as that of I was looking for. I wanted to break perspective, revealing the central role Azevedo’s art work stimulate a powerful the characteristics of the monument. played by culture as a tool for building the discourse that is necessary, both consciously Curiously, monuments in antiquity systemic capacity to evolve with changing and subconsciously. Her installations are were made to remember that people conditions. Not only is the manifesto situated in dialogue with the environment die. As today in the capitalist system a clear sign of the contributions that a and the community. Her aesthetic language the “dead” do not produce wealth, the uniquely Latin American environmental personalizes experience of place and adds dead do not enter into the “account.” thinking can make to international a humane dimension to the global conflict But we are still mortals. By affinity, I conversations about climate and global of a warming planet. She brings visibility to was invited to work on environmental change, it also functions as a road map for important issues and, while the dialogue issues. My work was considered by engaging the topics enunciated through may have a beginning and an end, the many as an alert to global warming the SDGs from multiple viewpoints, meaning that is produced lives on. and I accepted that affinity, because including the arts, the humanities and the it is our life that is threatened. The traditional knowledge that embeds much planet will continue to exist, but our of the regions’ own ecological potential Maria Alessandra Woolson teaches at life that is threatened. I do not know (Leff, E. “Latin American Environmental the University of Vermont for the College if we still have time to reverse it, but Thinking: A Heritage of Knowledge for of Arts and Sciences and the Honors I hope we have time. (Azevedo 2014, the Humanities,” 2012). College, and is an affiliate of its GUND my translation) As an aesthetic experience that is Institute for Environment. Her teaching both social and emotional, Minimum and scholarship bring together the world- Indeed, global change is increasingly Monument fosters a kind of dialogue that views of science and humanities, framed understood as a systemic, eco-social is still infrequent in discussions about by sustainability as a paradigm for challenge that requires a deeper capacity climate change. The transformational interdisciplinary studies in the context to foster leadership and responses and disquieting aesthetic of a melting of Latin America. Her research interests to both local and regional problems humankind forces the observer, even if and publications include transcultural for working across boundaries and only for an instant, to ask the why of the perspectives in Ecocriticism, the culture differences, from diverse disciplines and installation. It is here that its ephemeral of water and water governance, digital methods, to identities and cultures, and quality creates a visual image capable humanities, and biocultural diversity other ways of knowing the world. The of confronting the ethics (or the lack of as an empirical approach to the study of 2002 Manifesto for Life issued by Latin ethics) sustained by the many abstractions identity and conservation.

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Hispaniola Crowned Frog

Writing at the End of the World Mayra Montero’s In the Palm of Darkness By JOHN WALDRON

MAYRA MONTERO’S IN THE PALM OF DARKNESS Macoute fought for control over the nation drug lords let him know what they think (Tú, la oscuridad, 1995) takes us on an in- through intimidation and violence. Victor of his special status, “The most recent depth journey that allows us to understand is oblivious to the fact that he is in danger issue of Froglog, a monthly bulletin of data relationships between the crises caused throughout the narrative. He feels that concerning the decline in amphibians, lay by climate change and coloniality (a term his status as a scientist and a Westerner on a stone covered in a pile of shit” (45). coined by Aníbal Quijano to describe the will protect him from the environmental Thierry, on the other hand, is highly hierarchies left by colonialism). and political chaos that surrounds him. aware of all that is going on. Unlike In the novel, the author deals with frog At one point, Thierry senses that a gang Victor, Thierry is able to read the signs all extinctions and ecological devastation wants them to leave a mountain where around them because he learned about but only as a backdrop to the main they search for the frog. Focused on his frogs from an eminent herpetologist, is narrative. Montero tells the story of the objective, and thinking he is protected a practitioner of Voodoo, and his brother herpetologist Victor Grigg, accompanied due to his status, Victor insists they stay. is a Macoute. He is sensitive to elements by his Haitian guide Thierry Ariene, Thierry eventually convinces him, and that are unimportant to Victor and that in search of what is possibly the last as they are running down the mountain, form a background to their quest. The specimen of the red frog or grenouille de Victor stops when he sees a journal background comes to the foreground sang. The novel is set in Haiti during the containing his article left by the group no matter how much Victor or we may tumultuous political times when former that had destroyed his and Thierry’s wish to ignore it. In one instance Victor president Jean-Bertrand Aristides was camp. Seeing his name in print confirms unwittingly witnesses a “necklacing” —a in exile and the paramilitary TonTon his usual sense of self-importance, but the Macoute technique in which the victim

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is burned to death by tying him or her of what ecologist Elizabeth Kolbert calls thus appropriate that Montero places the to a tire and setting it on fire. Oblivious “the sixth extinction,” our own demise as novel in Haiti because, as Lisa Paravasini- to the danger he is in, he gets hit on the a species. If narratives can sometimes help Gebert argues, “the ghost of Haiti haunts head and falls down unconscious. If we us reimagine our relations to each other the Caribbean imaginary.” choose to discount the background, as and our environment, thus allowing us to Thierry, Victor and maybe even the Victor does when he unwittingly observes create a better world, Montero’s novel is frog could have been saved had Victor a necklacing, then we too may end up about our own failure to imagine or create decided to pay attention to the Haitian clubbed on the head. alternative possibilities. The reason we herpetologist Emile Boukaka instead of Montero structures her novel in the cannot conceive of other options is due to discounting his knowledge. When Victor form of Russian literary critic Mikhail our own blindness caused by coloniality. first meets Boukaka Bakhtin’s “polyphonic” narrative. Some Like Victor, we are entirely oblivious to he tells us that he had an image of chapters are narrated by one or the our connection to the devastation all him as a mulatto . . . less chubby and other of the main characters, some by a around us. Living lives of relative luxury, tropical than he actually was. . . he cold, objective scientific voice frequently we may travel to a place like Haiti and was absolutely black, intensely black, quoting from scientific journals about the ignore the problems because we think they the skin on his arms gleamed as if he extinction of frog species throughout the do not affect us, that they are just part of a had been born in Africa . . .There, in globe. Along with the Macoute’s violence place, people and culture that are eternally the fat circle of that face, his nose, his and fear tactics, the chapters about frog troubled, confirming perhaps racial biases bulging eyes, his thick half-smiling extinctions provide a global perspective that form part of coloniality. Montero lips seemed to be dancing. (93) and apocalyptic backdrop to the narrative. shows the relation between inequities As literary critic Laura Gillman Like the lynched and dismembered bodies and environmental devastation, between observes regarding this scene, “Grigg’s that seem to accumulate at an accelerated the background and foreground of her taxonomy is not an innocent description pace as the novel nears its end, the narrative. However, through Victor, she but rather an ideological codification of disembodied voice comes to haunt the also shows our own failure to recognize racial difference that naturalizes relations reader through sheer repetition. What the connections. of superiority and inferiority between the also creates the sense of horror with these Although we are all suffering the effects colonizers and the colonized” (“Inter- sections is that Montero provides no clear of climate change, the results of climatic American Encounters in the Travel relation between them and the events devastation are not felt equally. The slow, and Migration Narratives of Mayra confronting Victor and Thierry that, on ineffective and racially biased response Montero and Cristina García: Toward the surface at least, seem to be the central to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans a Decolonial Hemispheric Feminism.” narrative. Victor, Thierry and the last and now Maria in Puerto Rico shows Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and frog are finally united in death in the last how hierarchies created by colonialism Society. vol. 39, no. 2, 2014, 518). Victor’s section, told by the objective voice. Readers create the ideological structure in which interaction with Boukaka is the product learn that, “The bodies of the scientist and these inequities continue. Given a similar of the ideological framework created his Haitian assistant, Thierry Adrien, were connection to coloniality and its limits, it is by coloniality, a framework never found. The last, carefully founded on racism, mis- preserved specimen of the ogyny and capitalism, which grenouille de sang was lost with prevents him from accepting them at sea” (183). what Boukaka has to say as Even more unsettling knowledge. perhaps than their deaths and Victor’s thought, limited the ecological devastation—the as it is by coloniality, leads dismemberments, necklacing to his and Thierry’s demise. and lynching—is the fact that Boukaka says that, “when the novel itself is about its own Damballah desires it, the failure. It is about the inability great flight will begin . . of Victor to interpret the signs The great flight has begun . given to him and to make the . . You people invent excuses: connections that would save acid rain, herbicides, his, the frog’s and Thierry’s deforestation. But the frogs life. That failure suggests the are disappearing from inability of narrative and art in places where none of that general to imagine a way out Hurricane damage in the Caribbean affects wildlife, including frogs.

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happened” (96). Victor’s response is astounding. He says, “I wondered who He is incapable of seeing the interconnection he meant by, ‘you people’” (96). He does between the decaying nature and the anarchic not question Boukaka’s premise or his argument. It is almost as if he does not political situation surrounding him. hear a word Boukaka says excepting “you people.” It is unfortunate that he did spaces are about extinction. There is no Thierry, the person whom Victor not probe the reference to Damballah salvation in any death in this text, and would rather silence, becomes the locus in Boukaka’s warning. If the frogs are there is no significance in death. Death for a possible narrative of resignification. being called back to the ocean, the last opens no narrative possibilities” (“Mapping Contrary to the scientific vision that thing you would want to do is get on a a New Literary Century in the Caribbean.” tries to place the rational observer boat with a frog. Yet that is what Victor Body Signs: The Latino/a Body in Cultural standing in a superior position to the does, leading to his and Thierry’s death. Production, 2011, 144). Further driving the observed, Thierry is both the observed Victor cannot consider what Boukaka nail in the novel’s coffin, Embry connects and the observer. Thierry like Boukaka says as “knowledge” because of the divide the death in this novel with the death of is highly erudite in both herpetology as produced by coloniality that shapes the magical realism as a possible imaginative well as local knowledge. It is in the non- ideological limits creating Victor’s and tool that might create the possibility for hierarchal intersection of these two types planetary salvation. our worldview. of understanding where narratives can be Montero also shows how his emphasis Victor’s ignorance and bigotry frame all reshaped and new worlds can be imagined. on reason and objectivity leads to Victor’s of his interactions. When he first meets his Such possibilities prove very troubling inability to see what may be more future guide, he says, “he looked too old, to Victor. He is incapable of seeing the important and eventually to his death. even sickly. . .I concluded that in the field interconnection between the decaying Victor is emblematic of the mind/body at midnight, setting out on the difficult nature and the anarchic political situation split, which is foundational to modernity, treks of an expedition, this man would surrounding him. Though he does learn the scientific method and ultimately not be of much use to me” (19). Victor quite a bit from Thierry, he does not learn colonialism/coloniality. His imbrication then draws the frog he is looking for, and in coloniality is evident in his dismissal enough to save his, Thierry’s and the Thierry takes the pencil to correct the of other knowledges. On the first page frog’s life. Montero’s narrative becomes a drawing. Victor is momentarily shaken, of the novel Victor says of Thierry, “I let warning to what happens when we forget his worldview unsettled. He says, upon him talk a while. It’s impossible to keep stories because they are unsettling. seeing the perfected drawing, “now I was a man like Thierry quiet for long” (1). At In the Palm of Darkness is about the one trying to gain a few moments” the beginning of the next chapter Victor many things, ecological devastation, (19). As Gillman argues, Thierry, “creates narrates, chapter three, he says, “I began the political chaos in Haiti caused by a cracks in this ideological system” (518). taping my conversations with Thierry history of colonialism/coloniality, failed The “cracks” however unsettling they might when I realized that between stories he relationships, the extinction of species be, are not enough to transform Victor in was inserting important information and the failure of magical realism time to save him. His demise leads to the about the frog” (18). Victor first shows his among others. Ultimately it confirms realization that he and we must listen to authority over Thierry’s right to speak and what Elizabeth Kolbert argues in The the stories and knowledges of other people then separates stories to look for what he Sixth Extinction, humans have a special and integrate them into our own if the considers important while Thierry sees proclivity for destruction even when it planet and we are to survive. However, everything as connected. Thierry tells us, means they are destroying themselves. Montero’s novel shows the failure of any “That’s a defect of mine when people tell However, rather than just a journey to the transcultural communication limited as it me something: I always keep track of the apocalypse, the events allow us to become is by coloniality. ones in the background, the ones who aware of the atrocities we have committed Critic Marcus Embry argues that disappear for no reason. The forgotten and that have led us to where we are now. Montero’s novel rehearses the demise of ones” (12). With this statement both New possibilities, new imaginings will transculturation—often expressed through Thierry and Montero invite us to look at make us feel unsettled. However, if we the literary genre of magical realism—and the different, perhaps forgotten narrative choose to ignore what unsettles us, we risk of the novel itself. Embry contends that threads running through this novel as ending like Victor, a victim of our own In the Palm of Darkness, “we have a novel well as to keep track of the “forgotten blindness and false sense of security. that is remarkably flat in terms of narrative ones” something that Victor might see as a spaces to which we can assign a politics “defect.” Nevertheless, as Embry points out, John Waldron is an Associate Professor of resignification, because the narrative the novel emphasizes our failure to do so. of Spanish at the University of Vermont.

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Words That Matter Imagining Climate (and) Change By GISELA HEFFES

THOSE OF US WITH LITTLE CHILDREN OFTEN city of motionless pain, city of immense read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss to them at brevities, city of fixed sun, ashing city of bedtime. The story points toward the slow fire, city to its neck in water, city of past, because the Lorax is a ruin, with merry lethargy, city of twisted stinks, city only residues remaining of something rigid between air and worms, city ancient that once existed. The narrator character, in light, old city cradled among birds of Once-ler, tells the story of why the Lorax omen, city new upon sculptured dust, “was lifted away” from a land where once city in the true image of gigantic heaven, upon a time “the grass was still green/ city of dark varnish and cut stone, city and the pond was still wet/and the clouds beneath glistening mud, city of entrails were still clean/and the song of the and tendons, city of the violated outrage, Swomee-Swans rang out in space…” On city of resigned market plazas, city of arriving to this “glorious place,” the first anxious failures, city tempested by domes, thing Once-ler saw were “the Truffula city woven by amnesias, bitch city, hungry Trees,” the “bright-colored tufts of the city, sumptuous villa, leper city. Here we Truffula Trees.” Motivated by greed and bide. And what are we going to do about the relentless desire to get rich, Once-ler it? Where the air is clear” (1995, 4-5). chopped down tree after tree to take off Without a doubt, the metamorphosis their tops to make “Thneeds,” despite the that this space has suffered cannot just warnings of Lorax, a small orange figure dystopic—although also open to a be attributed to the changing modes of who “speaks for the trees, for the trees possible utopia—a story produced from thinking and conceiving the relationship have no tongues.” The rest of the story is the author’s imagination, emphasizing between man and the natural world, but well known: the trees are chopped down the “unless” of the story’s ending. also to the mechanisms and devices for until they are gone; the “Brown Bar-ba- Just like Once-ler, the Portuguese the continual exploitation and destruction loots” leave because there’s no fruit to eat; historian Pero de Magalhães Gandavo of the environment. the swans can’t sing because their throats was dazzled by a landscape—this time in When Homero Aridjis, also a Mexican have been contaminated by smog; the fish Brazil. In 1576, he wrote about his visit: author, published his novel ¿En quien can’t swim in the lake and the sky turns “This land is the best of all for the life of piensas cuando haces el amor? in 1995, he gray from the pollution of the factories. man: the air is exceptionally healthful, revisited this same trope in order to put The bright and colored space populated and the soil is extremely fertile; all that forth, in the words of one of his characters, by Truffula Trees is transformed into is before you is delightful and pleasing to the following itinerary: “Before returning a somber and inanimate wasteland. the human eye to a great degree” (1995). A home, wander along Gladiolas Street. Fortunately, the story ends by telling us similar impression has been attributed to There is a hill there from which one can about a surviving seed. Perhaps one day Alexander von Humboldt, when, in 1804, observe the twilight over the Anáhuac the forest will return and, with it, all its he referred to the Anáhuac Valley and Valley, a twilight made up of confused living friends. Mexico City with the well-known phrase: lights, dirty colors, dripping shadows and After reading the story again and “Traveler: you have reached the region stinking odors” (34). This description again to my daughter Sarah and my son where the air is clearest.” In 1917, Alfonso demonstrates how, with the passage of Nathaniel, I realized that this is not exactly Reyes used this phrase as an epigraph for time, the reference to a particular space a book children enjoy. On the contrary, his book Visión de Anáhuac (1519), and in can serve simultaneously as a symbol it is a story that fills them with anxiety 1958, Carlos Fuentes titled his first novel of environmental decomposition. We and uncertainty. Perhaps, if more of a La región más transparente (Where the could elaborate a genealogy for this distance existed between the imaginary Air Is Clear): “Fall with me on our moon- one point in space and focus on its circumstances of the story and the very scar city, city scratched by sewers, crystal amplifications and repercussions—rather real present day, children might perceive city of vapor and alkali frost, city witness like a kaleidoscope—although, unlike the this tale as a true fiction, something to all we forget, city of carnivorous walls, kaleidoscope, where you once saw green,

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you now see brown, where you once saw forests, you now see concrete, and where you once witnessed a sustainable demographic population, you now see a demographic explosion that can hardly be sustained. In Latin America, an enormous and varied quantity of literary and artistic works register the fragility of our ecosystems. This breakdown is happening everywhere, as global warming and climate change do not distinguish between rural or urban spaces nor among races, ethnic groups or social classes, although it’s important to point out that the rich can more easily resist the impact of climate change; they live in communities less prone—but not immune— to disaster (as the recent mudslides in California illustrated). In general, the rich live along tree-lined streets in areas high enough to avoid flooding and in neighborhoods far from the contamination of factories and industrial waste. While we lose species at a dizzying speed, while we deforest our woods, make deserts out of our fertile earth, dynamite our mountains to look for precious minerals, while we suffer from extreme drought, fires, heavy rainfall and floods, and severe snowstorms, literature takes stock of these changes and transforms them into aesthetic objects to propose ethical approaches in explicit or implicit ways. Literature in Latin America has become a sounding board for a problem that has pursued us from the very arrival of the Europeans. Namely, this very land of abundance that Magalhães Gandavo described so well is, at the same time, a land of gold: “… there is much gold in those regions, according to the signs and samples which they found, and if people properly prepared should return thither with all necessary equipment, taking with them experts in this line, they would discover in that land great mines” (182). The natural world of the Americas, that is, the cornucopia of the “New World,” is catalogued and measured, studied, examined, and analyzed in terms of its potential for exploiting its resources: the gold to get rich, the pure air to get well and live fully, the fertile earth to work and cultivate, and the natural beauty to please the eyes and senses. The promise for the future,

34 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO BY MAXI JONAS, HTTPS://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/MAXIJONASFOTOS/ THROUGH THE LENS OF LITERATURE

however, is based on the negation of their own form. How then does literature denounce the exploitation of animals that other world, as another historian, think about the future of the species? and the extinction of various species in this case, Shawn William Miller, has How can it conceive a temporality under in the name of a devastating progress. formulated: “the so-called ‘New World,’ siege by imaginaries that dispute about His poem “Ballenas” [“Whales”] tells once removed from the perspective of the final prognostication or outcome in us of the disappearance of this marine Columbus’ astonishing landfall, is seen regards to the small planet we live in? mammal: “Suena en la noche triste / de more accurately as just another old While the present is opening itself more las profundidades / su elegía y despedida world” (An Environmental History of and more to speculation, Latin American / porque el mar / fue despoblado de Latin America, 2007, 8-9). This promise literature and art have already been ballenas” (1993, 24) (“Through the sad for the future, however, is supported by a reporting for centuries the slow looting night of the deep / resounds / their vision that denies that other old world in that has decimated human and non- elegy and farewell / because the sea / order to establish a model that erases the human populations, species, forests, rivers has been dispossessed of its whales” (25) previous one, creating the groundwork and mountains. From Simón Bolívar’s And continues, towards the end, “… todo for the construction of a system based warning in 1829 about the exploitation el mar se vuelve / un mar de sangre / on its own economic, social and cultural of the forests, in which he declared mientras las llevan al destazadero / para necessities. that “we are experiencing excessive hacerlas lipstic / jabón aceite / alimento Literature registers our stories. It harvesting of wood, dyes, quinine, and de perros” (26) “…And all the sea becomes moves along the concept of “Vor-Shein” other substances, especially in the forests / a sea of blood / as they are towed to the or “anticipatory illumination,” as German belonging to the state, with disastrous factory ship / to make lipstick / soap philosopher Ernst Bloch suggested (The consequences” to the appearance, more oil / and dog food” (27) (translation by Utopian Function of Art and Literature, than a century and a half later, of José Margaret Sayers Peden). The poem seems 1988). For Bloch, literature and art contain Emilio Pacheco’s book of poems Álbum to be asking; in the name of what are we “anticipatory illumination” about what de zoología (1985), these foreshadowings emptying ourselves? How can we define has not yet happened, and thus writers have existed. The poems not only point ourselves as humanity? Hasn’t it become and artists allow the latent and potential out the disastrous consequences of necessary to reevaluate the project of materials that surround them to assume climate change in his country, but also modernity? And, finally, what is progress?

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 35 CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change and environmental degradation caused by humans threatens marine mammals. Dominican photographer Eladio Fernández, who is also a conservationist, documents whale life in the region. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, climate change may affect the areas of the oceans in which whales live, including migration patterns. Climate change, depletion in the ozone layer and the related rise in UV radiation may also lead to a fall in the population of krill, a primary food source for many marine spe - cies, the organization notes.

36 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS; THIS AND OPPOSITE PAGE BY ELADIO FERNANDEZ WWW.ELADIOFERNANDEZ.COM THROUGH THE LENS OF LITERATURE

Like Pacheco, the Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda also narrates the massacre and extinction of the marine mammals on the other end of the continent, in the extreme south. Mundo del fin del mundo (1989), one of his best-known novels, refers to this catastrophe or “ecological disaster” in the “Gulf of Sorrows,” where every spring people used to watch “the mating of the pilot whales” (100-1). This magnificent spectacle, nevertheless, has ended because of the “boat factories” that sweep up the ocean, turning it into “a dark cauldron of dead waters” (101-2). The discourse of abundance and cornucopia is posed against that of scarcity and shortages. The earlier spectacle has become invalid because it does not correspond to reality. However, not all the narratives opt for elegy. During the 19th century and—with some exceptions—until the 1950s, Latin American literature has incorporated the role of climate as protagonist, although not necessarily as climate change caused by humans. From Argentine writer Domingo F. Sarmiento’s novel Facundo in 1845 to María (1867) by Colombia’s Jorge Isaacs, Os Sertões (1902), by Brazilian Euclides da Cunha, La vorágine by Eustasio Rivera (1924), Don Segundo Sombra (1926) by Ricardo Güiraldes and Doña Bárbara (1929) by Rómulo Gallegos, among many others, all feature a ubiquitous and constant role of climate and narrate how its varied characteristics influence not only the personalities of the novels’ characters, but also the cultural and economic aspects of reality depicted in these tales. More recent climate change, however, consists of the acceleration of these effects, because it is a problem of scale: both in terms of size it is a slow violence, as Princeton’s Rob imagine climate (and) change. Because it is and frequency. Nixon defines it, or whether because it in the imagination that one also finds the If literature captures processes in the is an entity of such vast temporal and key to innovate, communicate, visualize making—in status nasquendi—it also spatial dimensions—a hyperobject—that it and transform: the last seed, as it were, moves them forward, playing a role in becomes inconceivable, as Rice University’s of Dr. Seuss’ Truffula Trees. And at the their formation that goes beyond mere Tim Morton theorizes. Literature, cultural end of the day it will all depend on the representations. According to Antonia texts and art examine the social and ethical “unless” that is waiting for us at The Lorax’s Mehnert, the author of Climate Change implications of this unprecedented crisis, conclusion. Fictions, culture texts not only create but also propose concrete interventions in a narrative but also mediate and shape the current debate about environmental Gisela Heffes is a fiction writer and our own reality (3). Climate change is a policies, tackling the material risks faced by an Associate Professor of Latin Ameri- phenomenon without precedent, hard to society as a whole and seeking to mold our can Literature and Culture at Rice pin down and to grasp, whether because conceptions about these changes. In short, University.

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 37 CLIMATE CHANGE

Who More Cli-Fi than Us? The Climate-Change Lessons of Andean Literature By PATRICIA VALDERRAMA

WHEN I TELL PEOPLE THAT I RESEARCH CLIMATE immigrant experience literary representations in discussions change and literature, they usually start all motivate Yunior’s about climate change. In addition to asking me about novelists like Kim Stanley question. Because documenting a brutal history of violence Robinson, Claire Vaye Watkins or Jeff colonial genocide against indigenous and mestiz@ peoples VanderMeer. It makes sense. Climate went hand in hand and ecosystems, natural-cultural histories fiction—or cli-fi—that depicts the earth with ecocide, the of Latin America demonstrate how to after some kind of future weather-induced devastation of grieve and build resilience in the face of apocalypse seems like a natural starting ecosystems on which personal, cultural and ecological loss. point for a literary study of climate change. indigenous American By way of example, I will turn to Andean In response, I could explain that I don’t ways of life relied, I literature. The mountains themselves, a work on an English-language corpus, like to rephrase Yunior’s question to include shared colonial history as part of a major but there are Latin American equivalents our environmental past. So, I ask, who Spanish viceroyalty, ongoing extractive to those Anglophone bestsellers, like more cli-fi than us? mining operations in places like Potosí and Edmundo Paz Soldán (Iris, 2014), Pedro Indigenous peoples and their mixed- multiple vibrant indigenous cultures unite Mairal (El año del desierto, 2005) and race (mestiz@) descendants across the two this region as a category for academic study. Roberta Spindler (“Sol no Coração,” 2013), American continents and the Caribbean One of those indigenous cultures is that of to name a few. But I don’t study these have lived through more than one the Quechua people, or runa, and one runa authors either. ecological apocalypse—first in the colonial story is Montacerdos (Pigrider), a novella The narrator of The Brief Wondrous period and then in the different stages of written in Spanish and Quechua and first Life of Oscar Wao, Yunior de las Casas, asks 20th- and 21st-century industrialization. published in 1981 by the Peruvian author a question that reveals how Latin American By examining the ecological histories Cronwell Jara. fiction is relevant to climate change: “Who intertwined with human ones, we open In Jara’s novella, a young mestiza child more sci-fi than us?” Colonial trauma, up new possibilities for the interpretation recalls the events following the journey its aftermath and the radical shifts of the of Latin American cultures and their she undertook with her older brother,

38 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO BY ATOQ RAMÓN/OJOS PROPIOS/ ILAS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THROUGH THE LENS OF LITERATURE

Yococo, and their mother, Griselda, from of curiosity. They immediately become cured diseases, suicide, drug trafficking, an unknown location in the Andes to a friends and play around the neighborhood alcoholism, the effects of protracted fictional shantytown outside of a major together until, one day, a starving Griselda hunger and exposure during his childhood Peruvian city, based on the Rímac district threatens to eat Celedunio. He and Yococo and adolescence—all among moments of in Lima. Montacerdos begins when Yococo, run away, only returning after Griselda solidarity, ordinary chores and play. Griselda and Maruja arrive at the outskirts accepts Celedunio as her child and promises In moving to Lima, Jara and his family of the city and assemble their home made never to threaten him again. From then were participating in a demographic shift of cardboard and rags. As Maruja puts it, on, Celedunio accompanies the family, that reshaped Peruvian society in the in the forbearing tone that characterizes especially Yococo, as they pull pranks, play second half of the 20th century, whose her voice, “Traíamos nuestra casa en music and eke out a living. cascading effects the author would later hombros” (We were carrying our house This alternative interpretative focus portray in much of his fiction. Although in on our shoulders). The residents of the underscores that resilience can be built Montacerdos the migration itself takes place neighborhood, also recent arrivals to the on interspecies kinship. In placing a pig off-page, as it were, it is the reason Maruja metropolis, shun Maruja and her family in the position that traditionally belongs and her family find themselves in an urban because of their poverty, extreme even for to canine companions, Jara points out setting, and the causes and conditions of the shantytown, and because migration to the way Peruvian society equates poor Peru’s mass migration impact every facet Lima occurred over the course of decades, Quechua-speaking mestiz@s with trash of the family’s experience once they arrive. which created hierarchies of belonging even and simultaneously repudiates that racist The seminal work on Peru’s among the disenfranchised squatters. colonial inheritance by imbuing the demographic upheaval, José Matos Eventually, a woman named Doña interspecies kinship with tremendously Mar’s Desborde popular (Popular Flood), Juana invites them to live in a corner of moving affect and vitality. This authorial identifies the country’s colonial legacy her adobe house, where the protagonists choice not only denounces racial, economic, as a significant underlying basis of the fare better for a short time. Then Juana’s cultural, linguistic and gendered injustice mass migration of mostly indigenous and husband repeatedly rapes Griselda while and oppression, but also suggests that joy mestiz@ Peruvians from rural Amazonian her nephew plays sadistic games with and endurance can be found in unexpected and Andean regions to coastal cities. The Yococo and forces Maruja to watch. Yococo places. Because of Celedunio, the family economic policies implemented by the dies after being trampled by the hooves of lives happier than they otherwise would, military dictatorship of President Manuel policemen’s horses and, shortly afterwards, and, because of the family, Celedunio does A. Odría (1948-1956) concentrated the Griselda dies after miscarrying the fetus too. That this relationship does not save economic and political capital generated that was the product of rape. The novella Yococo or Griselda from their deaths does by industrialization along the coast, the concludes with Maruja’s expulsion from not diminish its power to bring happiness historical site of colonial power. Staying Juana’s house, because she is coughing up and love into their lives as they struggle in the Andes, meanwhile, often entailed blood, and Maruja ends up living alone on through rending poverty. Indeed, after other laboring under a centuries-old servitude on the street. children see Yococo riding on Celedunio land that always belonged to someone else. That this would be an apocalyptic around the neighborhood, they begin to Matos Mar links these conditions to the experience for any child is only partially the ride pigs too. (Wonderfully, Jara himself internal domination of the urban-coastal- point. It is equally important that children engaged in this activity as a boy.) Pig-riding criollo over the rural-Andean-indigenous like Maruja regularly live through this kind is the hobby that eventually gives the town that the colonial regime—and, later, the of tragedy. How they do it renders their and the novella their name. In the end, the new republic—imposed. stories especially meaningful within the interspecies alliance is the primary way Economic and racist policies, along context of climate change, because what in which the family makes their presence with governmental neglect, were not the we are losing now—homes, forests, entire felt in a city that otherwise devalues and only factors that influenced the outcome of species, ways of life—portends a vaster brutalizes them. Peru’s internal migration, however. Nature series of losses in the future. The story of Jara knows much of the maltreatment does not vanish at city limits, in spite of the this migrant mestiza child holds lessons for and happiness that are parts of daily life in common tendency to associate it with the how to acknowledge loss and get on with Lima’s peripheries. Born in 1950 in Piura, rural. An earthquake in 1940 demolished living. a northwestern province of Peru, like his much of the available housing in Lima, Montacerdos could be summarized— characters, Jara moved to Rímac with creating a large number of homeless families equally accurately—as a novella about the his family at the age of five and grew up and a housing shortage just as migration family’s loving and tender friendship with speaking Spanish and Quechua. He recalls from the provinces began. Those displaced a large-eared pig named Celedunio. In this witnessing child abuse, murder, gang Lima residents and recent migrants found alternative summary, Yococo encounters rape, the premature deaths of teenagers their housing options together dictated as an underfed pig who nuzzles him out and adults due to preventable or easily much by ecology as by the market. Families

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 39 CLIMATE CHANGE

depicted in Montacerdos and actually lived by Jara cannot be clearly separated from climate-related displacement. The causes and consequences of economic and environmental displacement have merged so thoroughly over the past decades as to become nearly indistinguishable, leading both environmental philosophers and advocacy groups to begin to question the utility of the distinction. When I read Montacerdos, I keep the contemporary blurriness of these categories in mind. Embracing that blurriness allows me to see Maruja’s, Yococo’s and Griselda’s migration and marginalization as inseparable from biophysical and geological processes, like earthquakes and Caption: Pigs forage in Playa Rimac, Callao, Lima (above, 1999-2000; below, 1980s) soil quality, rather than viewing them as exclusively human phenomena cut off from is currently changing societies around natural history. It also allows me to see the the world. Simply put, climate change stories of these slums as part of the story means more humans will be temporary of climate change: why it manifests itself or permanent migrants. According to a the way it does, who it disproportionately 2015 report published by the International impacts and why, and why it is happening Displacement Monitoring Centre and the in the first place. The history of coloniality, Norwegian Refugee Council (IDMC-NRC), industrialization and the environment between 2008 and 2014 “an average of 26.4 overlap and converge in a way that allows million people have been displaced from Jara’s tale of a migrant mestiz@ family in their homes each year by disasters brought mid-century Peru, moving due to economic on by natural hazards—equivalent to one forces far beyond their control or possible person displaced each second. […] 17.5 realm of agency, to read as a parable for million people were displaced by disasters our current experience of climate change. brought on by weather-related hazards What a novella like Montacerdos offers is in 2014” alone, sometimes permanently. like Jara’s and Maruja’s could find room an alternative, one option among many Additionally, the probability of being to settle primarily on the city’s outskirts, that we will need, for how to endure with impacted by an environmental disaster which were uninhabited precisely because precarious multispecies joy during the has been growing over the past 40 years. they were not environmentally suitable for struggles and migrations to come. construction or agriculture. In contrast, the The IDMC-NRC report links this increased probability to higher levels of exposure long-settled regions of Lima are built on a Patricia Valderrama is a Ph.D. and vulnerability, which have, in turn, literal oasis. The economic and emotional Candidate in Comparative Literature been driven by the exponential rate and precariousness of Maruja’s childhood at Stanford University. She researches unplanned form of urban population extends down to the sandy, arid soil where 20th-century German, French and growth in cities like Lima. her family tries to build a home. Ecology, Latin American literatures and phi- The fact that displacement of an industrialization and colonial legacies losophies with a focus on representa- economic kind often instigated this mutually determine each other in the tions of humans’ interactions with the worldwide rural exodus and concomitant natural-cultural history of Peru’s internal more-than-human world, also known unplanned urban growth adds a note migration and the world Jara imagines in as nature. After completing her Ph.D., of bitter irony, for climate change only Montacerdos. she hopes to share the solution-oriented compounds the spatial, social and economic The economic forces that sparked Peru’s storytelling she has developed to help marginalization of urban inhabitants like rural-to-urban demographic shift and the build more sustainable societies. She Jara’s characters, in countries developing environmental forces that directed the is happiest when she is in the for- or otherwise. For these reasons, the effects resulting urban sprawl also have direct est, and can otherwise be reached at of unplanned urbanization so carefully parallels with the way climate change [email protected].

40 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO BY PAUL VALLEJOS, REVISTA CARETAS/OJOS PROPIOS; BELOW, PHOTO BY ÓSCAR MEDRANO CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES GLACIERS, FLOODS AND PRETTY PARROTS

Jai C. Beeman and Jean Carlos Ruiz Hernández Understanding Global Climate Change from Andean Glaciers Lisa Paravisini-Gebert The Parrots of the Caribbean • Ari Caramanica Resilience and Resistance in the Peruvian Deserts • Gustavo Diaz Paz Extreme Hydraulic Urbanism Karl S. Zimmerer et al. Climate Change and Food • Nicoló Filipo Rosso Climate Change and Resource Pressures

PHOTO: SISSEROU (AMAZONA IMPERIALIS). PHOTO COURTESY OF PAUL REILLO AND THE RARE SPECIES CONSERVATORY FOUNDATION REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 41 CLIMATE CHANGE

Understanding Global Climate Change from Andean Glaciers Perspectives from Ecuador and Bolivia

By JAI C. BEEMAN AND JEAN CARLOS RUIZ HERNÁNDEZ

IN THE SUMMER OF 2007, A SMALL GLACIER The responses to these questions are glaciers provide up to 30 percent of the disappeared north of La Paz, Bolivia. not so simple. For a glacier to survive, it dry season water source. At 17,000 feet above sea level, the small needs to receive at least the same mass in These conclusions are obtained mountain Chacaltaya is a mere foothill of precipitation that it loses by melt. When through long campaigns of observation its giant, glaciated brothers Huayna Potosi melt dominates, the glacier begins to and measurement. We make regular and Illimani. Accessible by taxi on a dirt recede. As a result of anthropogenic global trips to the Antisana massif and other road from the city of El Alto, its small warming, the interior tropical Andes are mountains to place instruments: glacier had been used as a marked ski run experiencing an increase in temperature meteorological stations, weirs to measure long ago. and higher precipitation variability. streamflow, stakes and pits to measure The Chacaltaya glacier became a local Glaciers in this part of the world are glacier mass. We add information symbol of changing climate: a mountain retreating as a result. from satellites that allow us to estimate stripped of its ice by temperatures rising Tropical glaciers are highly sensitive to precipitation, snow cover and topography. at unprecedented rates as we emit temperature changes, even on the hourly In Ecuador, public and private institutions greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. scale. In the tropical Andes, small streams together with international cooperation And similar changes are happening across can form as the sun warms the front of a allow us to continue this work. the Andes. glacier in the morning, only to disappear Antisana is a laboratory for glaciologists, Here, we tell two stories, from the at night. Over longer periods of time, they ecologists, biologists and hydrologists. Here, perspective of scientists training to testify to oceano-atmospheric phenomena, numerous Ecuadoran and international understand glaciers and how they change like the El Niño Southern Oscillation, students have trained at the undergraduate in response to climate. The first, from itself well referenced in popular culture. In and postgraduate levels. And from Ecuador, is a look into why, and more El Niño years in Ecuador, snow amounts Antisana, we will be able to answer the importantly, how we study glaciers and are reduced and temperature increases, urgent questions about how mountain their responses to modern climate change. an ideal combination for glacier mass water systems will respond to the climate The second, from Bolivia, takes a journey loss. La Niña years, on the other hand, change that we are exposed to. It’s in our from the Altiplano, up a glacial valley, and tend to induce small losses or even slight hands to generate and study the data to into the past. increases in mass. provide the answers. The Antisana massif, a colossus rising Jean Carlos Ruiz Hernández, Ecuador Jai Chowdhry Beeman, United States to 19,000 feet above sea level, is home Glaciers are like animals: they move, to the most observed glacier in Ecuador. The changes on Antisana in Ecuador change, grunt and are always angry, Located 25 miles outside of the capital, and the disappearance of the Chacaltaya notes Bear Grylls in his popular TV series Quito, its ice cap covers around seven glacier in Bolivia are part of a much longer Man vs. Wild. This colorful description square miles, just a bit less than the land story. Earth’s changing orbit and climate, captures why we feel so attracted to these area of Cambridge, Massachusetts (for through glaciers, have left their traces in colossi, and why some of us spend our our Boston-area ReVista readers). In the mountains. lives exploring and studying them. the Antisana massif, a complex network I was introduced to this record of People tend to have questions for of water catchments has been installed, changes during the year that I worked as glaciologists. Some of the most common: which supplies some of the water to the an intern at the Instituto de Hidraulica how long will we have glaciers? What will 2.5 million inhabitants of Quito. e Hidrologia/Institut de Recherche pour be the socioeconomic impact of changes Quito counts on glacial sources for five le Développement in La Paz. For a couple in freshwater availability for populations to ten percent of the city’s water supply days every two weeks or so, I would travel that depend, in part, on the water stored and will suffer less from glacier retreat with other technicians and students, both in glaciers? than a city like La Paz, for example, where from Bolivia and abroad, to the glaciers

42 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS ON OPPOSITE PAGE BY JEAN CARLOS RUIZ HERNÁNDEZ CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

formed by debris forced downslope by Moving up into the mountains, a flowing ice, cross the outlets of these much more recent sequence of terminal valleys and mark the past extent of these moraines, dated by Rabatel et al. (2008, glaciers. Quaternary Research) to the 17th to 19th The road out of El Alto crosses a centuries, crosses the increasingly narrow, terminal moraine to enter the Milluni steep valleys. These moraines testify to a Valley on its way to the Huayna Potosi more recent period of glacial advance, and Charquini massifs. Using cosmogenic known as the Little Ice Age. isotopes, whose concentrations vary slowly At the end of the road winding up over time, Smith et al. (2005, Science) Milluni valley, we arrive at a parking lot. date these moraines to between 34,000 Here, there is a refuge for mountaineers and 23,000 years old. During this period, and a seismic station. Continuing along huge glaciers would have loomed over the a path, we arrive at the tongue of Zongo plateau where El Alto now reigns. glacier. After 23,000 years ago, the glaciers This current position of Zongo glacier, began to retreat. And this age is probably which has retreated significantly even not a coincidence. Earth’s orbit constantly over the last few decades, is indicative Engineer Marco Solis transports material undergoes change. Around 24,000 years of a new period of climate, called the (above) and checks accumulation (below). ago, the Earth began to receive more Anthropocene: the epoch of pronounced sunlight. As temperatures rose, the human influence. The story is well known: massive glaciers that had spread out of the Industrial Revolution introduced the Andes would likely have begun to lose greenhouse gas emissions into the climate ice. Their fronts would have melted more system, provoking rising temperatures rapidly than they could be replenished by and a corresponding change in weather ice flowing down from the mountains. patterns. Chacaltaya’s south-facing glacier The changes in the amount of solar that may have once been a tributary of the radiation associated with glaciations and ice field flowing to the Altiplano, would deglaciations, though, are small, and the vanish. Its neighbor Charquini Sur, one of climate system does not respond quickly the glaciers I would visit every two weeks, to these changes. Rather, feedbacks in loses mass from almost all of its surface the climate system: greenhouse gases, most years. which re-emit radiation in the form of These modern changes are reflective in the Charquini and Huayna Potosi heat, and ice loss at the polar caps, which of changes in climate that are rapid massifs to download meteorological data increases the amount of radiation the and complex. But we have a reference and measure glacier mass. Usually, I was Earth system can retain, for example, can with which to understand how they will drawn to parts of the mountains further accelerate warming over thousands of proceed. In paleoclimate archives across afield for the weekends as well to explore. years. Then, mechanisms in the ocean and the globe, we have a record, albeit an Leaving El Alto, on the edge of the the atmosphere, like the ENSO variations imperfect one, of a true-scale experiment Altiplano, we would head towards the that determine each year’s variations on in climate change. These archives range Cordillera Real. The foothills of the Antisana, transport this heat across the from moraines; ice cores like that recently cordillera are cut by wide, u-shaped globe. drilled on Illimani, Bolivia’s highest peak, valleys, where streams connect the high These mechanisms are likely by the IceMemory project; tree rings; lake mountains to the altiplano. responsible for variations as the glaciers and ocean sediments; speleothems; and These u-shaped valleys during the last retreated to higher altitudes. Jomelli et many others, each recording different glaciation were filled with ice. During al (2014, Nature) indicate that another components of Earth’s climate. The the glaciation, responding to lower advance likely occurred here around climate changes that occurred during the solar radiation amounts, ice sheets had 14,500 years ago, during the period past, like those that caused glaciers to formed over much of North America and known as the Antarctic Cold Reversal. The retreat above La Paz, might be indicative northern Europe. Smaller caps covered glacier advance during this period in the of what we should expect for the future. high mountain regions as well: huge Andes coincided, remarkably, with lower The continued development of a glaciers carved out the valleys that now temperatures recorded in archives across network of paleoclimate records in the surround the Alps, the Himalayas and the the Southern Hemisphere and a pause in Andes will be imperative for this century,

Andes. Rises known as terminal moraines, the deglacial CO2 increase. as we attempt to understand how climate

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 43 CLIMATE CHANGE

will change and how we might adapt. These records allow us to constrain Quito counts on glacial sources for five to ten the behavior of climate mechanisms percent of the city’s water supply and will suffer in the past. In turn, we can attempt to understand how these mechanisms will less from glacier retreat than a city like La Paz, for operate under changing climate in the example, where glaciers provide up to 30 percent future. of the dry season water source. Jai Chowdhry Beeman is a Ph.D. can- didate at the Université Grenoble Alpes, where his most recent work is on the last deglaciation as recorded in Antarctic ice cores. He worked as a publications intern for ReVista during his time as an undergraduate at Harvard. His time at ReVista took him to Bolivia and the glaciers of the high Andes.

Jean C. Ruiz Hernández is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Transportation Management career of the Chimborazo Polytechnic School in Riobamba-Ecuador. His research work focuses on the impacts of climate vari- ability on partial glaciarized catch- ments and water management. He will begin a Ph.D. at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie this spring.

Engineer Marco Solís, taking samples of solid precipitation 5300 msnm, left. The glaciated south face of Huayna Potosi, Cordillera Real, Bolivia, right.

44 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 LEFT: PHOTO BY JEAN CARLOS RUIZ HERNÁNDEZ RIGHT: PHOTO BY JAI C. BEEMAN CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

The Parrots of the Caribbean Facing the Uncertainties of Climate Change By LISA PARAVISINI-GEBERT

I ASK YOU, FOR A FEW MOMENTS, TO IMAGINE A Caribbean region where you can suddenly be rendered breathless by the sight of a flock of a thousand Amazona parrots flying overhead, darkening the skies like a gaily colored, deafeningly squaking eclipse of joy. Columbus, sailing past the Bahamas, described such flocks of parrots “obscuring the sun.” The dazzling display—unimaginable today—occasionally met European explorers sailing between Vieques and Puerto Rico before the ecological revolution unleashed by colonization pushed most Caribbean parrots and macaws onto their slow but inexorable path towards extinction. Climate change—manifested through warming Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittata), critically endangered. trends, decline in food availability and the intensification of extreme weather offered in this historic first exchange. of various psittacidae were given away events, as we saw through the devastation As Columbus describes it in the diary of to European kings as tokens of Spain’s caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria his first voyage, “they came swimming feat of discovery. From the earliest in September 2017—may signal the end to the ship’s boats, where we were, and moments of the colonization process these of parrot species that have lived in the brought us parrots and cotton threads in psittacidae specimens became emblems of region for millions of years, long before balls, and spears and many other things, a wondrous spectacle that embodied the human inhabitants were recorded in the and we exchanged for them other things, marvels of the newly discovered Caribbean area. The threat to parrot populations such as small glass beads and hawks’ territories, lands of exotic abundance posed by tropical storms has deepened bells, which we gave to them.” Native and green tropical forests vibrant with due to changes in the climate caused by Caribbean peoples were known to have sparkling parrots glimpsed as flashes of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the kept and traded live parrots and macaws, red, emerald and turquoise. atmosphere from the burning of fossil but this familiar gesture of exchange was The parrots’ symbolic and very public fuels. Parrot extinctions have taken place going to forever change the scale of such display before the old world marked, throughout the Caribbean region, where trades, endangering numerous species in ironically, the beginning of processes there only remain 14 of as many as 20-25 the process. that would lead to most of them being species recorded in the first centuries after Amazona parrots and Ara macaw now extinct or listed by the International the European encounter. specimens were exhibited at the royal Union for the Conservation of Nature as At the time of Columbus’ encounter court in Barcelona as Columbus, extremely threatened or endangered— with the “Indies,” there were twenty-some upon his return from his first voyage, some of them among the most endangered parrots species in the Caribbean. They presented a procession of naked Native birds in the world. The steady decline belonged to the psittacine subfamily of Americans adorned with gold and bearing of the Caribbean’s Amazona and Ara birds, as did the region’s macaws, about multicolored parrots. A year later, upon populations can be measured from eight or nine endemic species of the Ara Columbus’s return from his second the first century of the colonization genus, now all extinct. Together, they voyage, masses of Sevillians rushed to process, caused by rapid deforestation took center stage in his account of the the docks to watch a Palm Sunday parade to open millions of acres for agriculture first encounter with the native peoples of Indians in gold masks carrying New (including sugar production), cattle of the region, as one of the salient items World parrots and macaws. Specimens raising, widespread logging, introduction

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of exotic plants and animals (among them the island’s two endemic parrots, the parrot predators), and poaching to supply Sisserou (Amazona imperialis) and the birds for Europe’s growing exotic-pet Jaco (Amazona arausiaca or red-necked market. Island bird species, given their parrot), already endangered, saw their particular vulnerability to anthropogenic numbers reduced to catastrophically extinction (extinctions caused directly by low levels. Their condition prompted humans), represent roughly 90 percent of the forestry service to engage in a highly bird extinctions since European colonizers successful project to increase the number targeted islands as prime possessions. of specimens and bring the species out of Most of the birds currently on the world’s the IUCN’s endangered list. endangered list, not suprisingly, live on Puerto Rico’s own endemic species islands, and many of them belong to the (Amazona vittata), with a population of Caribbean’s psittacidae family, whose about 2000 in the 1930s, had sustained need for reasonably large expanses of an ongoing population decline that forest made them particularly vulnerable reduced it to 47 parrots by 1975. The to the type of ecological revolution that impact of Hurricane Hugo (1989), European colonizers brought to the brought that number down to a critically region. Their vulnerability has led some endangered low of 22 birds, a number experts to conclude that they are “doomed impacted negatively again in 1998 by in the wild.” Hurricane George. Before the rainforest at The impact of climate change on El Yunque, the last stronghold of the relict Caribbean avian populations can be wild population of Puerto Rican parrots, Jaco (Amazona arausiaca) measured already through changes sustained a direct hit from Hurricane in population distribution, increased Maria in September 2017, the number of The Sisserou, the largest of the temperatures on breeding grounds and individuals had been reduced to thirteen. Caribbean’s Amazona parrots—a changes in rainfall that affect patterns Tom White, chief biologist of the U.S. Fish remarkably beautiful bird whose of migration for wintering birds. But and Wildlife Service’s Puerto Rican Parrot distinctive colors (purple head and by far the greatest menace comes from Recovery Program, expressed his deep underpants, dark maroon wing-speculum the increases in hurricane intensity— concern in a 2016 conversation. He feared and red carpal edge) justify its “imperial” frequency, size, duration, levels of rainfall, that the fragile remaining population, a name—sustained heavy losses following and wind speeds—that scientists expect tiny group “on life support,” “could not the obliteration of its mountain canopy as global temperatures shift upwards— survive another hurricane.” habitat by Hurricane Maria. Shy and and which have been linked to the loss of Sadly, the endemic parrot populations elusive at the best of times, the bird had life and extensive damage to nature and of Puerto Rico and Dominica were the not been sighted for nearly six weeks property throughout the Caribbean in the hardest hit by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. following the hurricane despite television wake of Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and The impact of the hurricanes on the two and radio appeals to the population, and Maria in 2017. islands best known for their assertive it was feared that the species had been Parrot species are especially vulnerable efforts to conserve their parrot species driven to extinction by the storm. On to hurricane damage because they are illustrates the extreme vulnerability November 8, Durand confirmed the first dependent on forests and their thick of threatened and endangered parrot sighting of a single individual south of vegetation for food and protection from populations to expected climate change. the capital, Roseau, away from its usual predators. Direct hurricane hits on their In an interview in July 2017, Steve Durand habitat, where it had been driven in search habitats can bring species to the verge of of Dominica’s Forestry, Wildlife and of food. Other sightings have followed, extinction. As storms strip their forest Parks Division, cautioned that despite but these have not been numerous, and habitats bare, surviving the hurricane the Sisserou and Jaco’s slow but steady we await an official count by the Forestry itself is only the first step in survival, recovery—which had made it possible for Office to determine the extent of the as they must then struggle in deeply the two species to reach numbers close surviving population and gauge the compromised environments with limited to five times their pre-Hurricane David steps needed to aid its recovery. It is a food supplies, often competiting with population (250-350 for the Sisserou, disheartening predicament for a group of predators for food and shelter. This was 1,200-1,500 for the Jaco)—climate dedicated forestry officers who have been the case with the damage inflicted by change, with its potential for intensive working on the saving of the species for Hurricane David (1979) on the island hurricanes, reminded us that “the species’ close to four decades, since the launching of Dominica, when the populations of future was far from secure.” of “Project Sisserou,” a national effort to

46 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO OPPOSITE PAGE BY GLORIA ARCHILLA; ABOVE: COURTESY OF PAUL REILLO AND THE RARE SPECIES CONSERVATORY FOUNDATION CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

acquire the large parcel of privately-owned it belongs to the U.S. National Park their precarious habitat. Realizing the land to consolidate the parrot’s habitat, Service. The irony of the island’s extant precarious situation of the extant wild the expansion of environmental awareness wild parrot population living in an population under their care, White and programs, the support of scientific studies U.S.-controlled habitat was not lost on his forestry team were planning the aimed at the preservation of the “shy and Puerto Rican ecologists, who in the early capture and re-release in the karst region secretive” Sisserou and the more abundant 1990s demanded (and received, after of one of their wild breeding pairs, hoping “noisy and gregarious” Jaco (Dominica’s tense negotiations), half of the captive that they could breed again in their new “second” parrot). The Jaco, always more population (around eighty birds born habitat and teach their own young about numerous than the Sisserou, has been and raised in captivity) to set up a new vocalizations about to go extinct, thereby recorded in healthy numbers since breeding aviary in Río Abajo—the José preserving a cultural component of the Hurricane Maria, and there are no present L. Vivaldi Aviary—on a “state” forest parrots’ development in the wild that fears for its survival, although it remains controlled by the Puerto Rican forestry can go extinct even if the species survives on the IUCN’s “threatened” list. commission. This aviary, where Puerto genetically. They were praying for time, The survival status of the Puerto Rican scientists have continued to breed enough perhaps to gradually move the Rican parrot in the face of hurricanes and parrots in close cooperation with the U.S. remaining wild population to the new climate change is complex—as there are Fish and Wildlife team at El Yunque, is habitat, perhaps to join the small flocks two distinct populations—and fraught in the island’s karst area, a once densely of Puerto Rican parrots that can now be with colonial entanglements and cultural populated area with numerous small seen again over the Puerto Rican forest. dislocations. The Puerto Rican parrot—a agricultural holdings abandoned in the It was not meant to be. The wild vibrant green, 12-inch tall bird, with blue- 1940s. This allowed the secondary forest to flock of parrots at El Yunque—the relict feathered primary wings, a characteristic recover to become the largest contiguously wild population and a flock of released red stripe over the beak and striking forested area on the island, harboring the captive-bred individuals—has not been white-ringed eyes—is listed by the IUCN richest biodiversity, with more than 1,300 located in its former range. It has been as one of the ten most vulnerable birds species of flora and fauna, among them the either scattered or decimated. Twenty- in the world. Two subspecies of the native and endemic species that include two recently-released parrots at El Yunque Puerto Rican parrot have already gone thirty federally listed as threatened or wore radio transmitters; the seventeen extinct, including the Amazona vittata endangered. that have been recovered were from dead gracilipes, which disappeared from The Río Abajo aviary began an birds. A dwindling hope rests with the its range in Culebra, off Puerto Rico’s enormously successful captive parrot five missing transmitters that they have eastern coast, in the late 1890s, a victim release program in 2004. When survived and the next breeding season will of deforestation, hunting, and San Ciriaco, Hurricanes Irma and Maria swept through bring them back home, with the handful of a devastating August 1899 hurricane that Puerto Rico, some 140 released Puerto wild birds that have been seen or heard in holds the record as the longest-lived Rican parrots were living and (most the recovering forest, and with the captive Atlantic hurricane in history. Before importantly) breeding in the wild in the population that survived the storm under Hurricane Maria struck, the 13 parrots new recovered forests of the northwest. special protection in the aviary. White has left in the extant wild population lived in They fared relatively well after Hurricane not dwelled on the disillusionment and a range of a little over six square miles, 0.2 Maria, despite significant damage to frustration, but in every interview speaks percent of its pre-colonial range, an area the forest, with a survival rate of about of his hope. increasingly encroached by tourism and 73 percent. This new population, born White keeps the faith. His resistance to vacation homes. These developments had and bred in captivity, is creating its own the possible loss of the remaining parrots not only restricted the wild population “culture” and language without access to is an act of defiance, an effort to preserve to its smallest range and lowest numbers sthe extant wild population in El Yunque, what remains of the sacred in their ever, but have increased the presence of the only population that knows the natural habitats, in their contributions to its natural predators, particularly of the characteristic vocalizations that marked biodiversity, their specific roles in island guaraguao hawk (the red-tailed hawk or the “culture” of the Puerto Rican parrot ecologies, their quirks and idiosyncrasies, Buteo jamaicensis), pushed away from at the time when the species began to be their particular beauty, their capacity to its habitat by continued construction of studied by scientists. It is the threatened make us marvel. hotels and shopping malls into the parrots’ repository of acquired, not genetic, range. vocalizations and behaviors on the verge Lisa Paravisini-Gebert, the 2016-17 The area of El Yunque where this of extinction. Wilbur Marvin Visiting Scholar at extant wild population struggled is in a The wild population in El Yunque did DRCLAS, is a Professor of Caribbean “national” forest under federal protection not fare well in the wake of Hurricanes culture and literature in the Department and supported by federal funds since Irma and Maria, both of which hit of Hispanic Studies at Vassar College.

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Resilience and Resistance in the Peruvian Deserts A PHOTOESSAY BY ARI CARAMANICA

JUST A FEW DECADES AFTER FRANCISCO otherwise desert coast of Peru, causing This event went undetected by both the Pizarro conquered Peru and the Inca floods and related effects: plagues, disease, U.S. and Peruvian climate monitoring Empire, a natural disaster struck the water and food shortages. While the first institutions until it was too late—it was Peruvian coast, threatening to put an end written records describing these events the most destructive event in recent to the colonial project. Locals described are dated to the colonial period, El Niño memory, leading to 158 flood-related putrefied farmland, locusts and the flooding has been occurring on the coasts deaths, 1,372,260 people displaced, and destruction of entire settlements caused of Peru and Ecuador since the beginning 3.124 billion dollars in damage. by massive El Niño floods. El Niño of the Holocene. Today, climate change has These massive events push the limits of Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a climatic led to a change in the pattern of events: El the modern state; however, the prehistoric phenomenon that arises due to changes Niños are more frequent, unpredictable cultures of Peru not only survived, but in normal sea surface temperatures and intense. flourished for almost five times as long, and winds over the Pacific Ocean. As a February 2017 witnessed just this until the Conquest in 1532. This past result, El Niño brings heavy rains to the kind of El Niño: the El Niño costero. summer, my team and I decided to explore

48 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS BY ARI CARAMANICA CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

Opposite page: Arid desert lands on Peru’s southern coast have been affected by flooding due to El Niño costero (b); Top of page: the team looks over a cornfield affected by the floods; bottom left: the team uses remote sensing techniques and paleo- botanical analysis to reconstruct agricul- tural landscapes from pre-hispanic coastal Peru (a); bottom right: blooming flowers in the desert; next page: a view of the desert.

the ancient landscapes of the remote system. The system included both compare images of the Pampa de Mocan Peruvian deserts to ask how prehispanic opportunistic features, such as check- in 2016 (a) and in 2017, after the El Niño societies managed El Niño without the dams to divert or capture floodwaters costero (b). With a team of Peruvian help of modern-day technology. dating to around 900 BC, and man- biologists and support from the David In normal years, the Pampa de made, large-scale infrastructure, such Rockefeller Center for Latin American Mocan—characterized by active dune as aqueducts and irrigation canals Studies (DRCLAS), I set out to collect fields and wind-eroded surfaces— dating to 1100 AD. It was only after the and record the plant growth across the receives less than half an inch of 2017 El Niño costero that we came to Pampa de Mocan. We recorded more precipitation each year. And although understand how large-scale and long- than 45 plant species, approximately 70 this environment is inhospitable to term agriculture could take place in this percent of which bloomed thanks to the any kind of life, we found densely desert: El Niño floodwaters turned the 2017 El Niño event. concentrated archaeological remains, Pampa de Mocan into a veritable oasis. The El Niño-related plants included including a vast ancient irrigation Thanks to drone photography, we can wild tomatoes, flowering herbs, gourds

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and legumes, along with sturdy shrubs and helped to defray crop loss in the to its desert state, is waiting for the next and young trees such as Capparis (also aftermath of disaster. opportunity to bloom. known as sapote or caper bush) and The Pampa de Mocan archaeological Prosopis (the mesquite or carob tree in evidence and the response of plant life in Ari Caramanica is a Ph.D. candidate the United States). this desert to the 2017 El Niño suggests in the Harvard Anthropology Depart- Incredibly, while the floodwaters that ancient agriculturalists practiced a ment. Her research focuses on the caused widespread destruction to the fundamentally different kind of disaster- sociopolitical impacts of borderland modern-day farmland, local farmers response strategy than what is used occupation and the reconstruction of used the ancient agricultural landscape today. Prehispanic societies were flexible agricultural landscapes of pre-hispanic in their backyards as an emergency and willing to adapt to the opportunities coastal Peru using remote sensing resource. An aqueduct dating to around presented by El Niño flooding, and techniques and paleobotanical analysis. 1100 AD acted as a dam during the 2017 some modern-day farmers continue that She is currently a Dumbarton Oaks floods, protecting the nearby town but tradition. One of the lessons of the El William R. Tyler Fellow. She received a also forming a reservoir. As the waters Niño Costero is that resilience to major DRCLAS grant to travel to Peru. receded, moisture and rich sediments climatic events is in practice today and were left behind. There, in these hidden can be traced back to prehistory. Future Collaborators: Universidad Peruana pockets of soils just behind the aqueduct, management of flood events might Cayetano Heredia Laboratorio de modern farmers tapped the near-surface include the strategic use of otherwise Palinología y Paleobotánica, Claudia R. moisture to plant corn, beans and squash. marginal areas of the coastal landscape— Morales, Fiorella Villanueva, Roxana The ancient agricultural remains provided places such as the Pampa de Mocan, Tornero, Prof. Luis Huaman Mesia, and a refuge for today’s opportunistic farmers which, although it has already returned Dr. Luis Jaime Castillo Butters.

50 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO, ABOVE BY ARI CARAMANICA CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

Extreme Hydraulic Urbanism Reframing Water Management on the Peruvian Coast By GUSTAVO DIAZ PAZ

GROWING UP ON PERU’S COAST, WE ARE ALWAYS told as children that we don’t have enough PRECIPITATION HISTORY water and that we shouldn’t waste it. But we also learn to get used to disasters, especially El Niño, which brings large amounts of water that cause floods and arrive every decade—at least once in the early life of every Peruvian child. And one out of two Peruvians live on its extensive coast, which has a desert climate. Scarcity and overabundance of water exist for us at the same time. Most of our coastal regions bring water from the Andean valleys or the Map and Amazon basin for agriculture and precipitation history of urban consumption by using costly Piura’s infrastructure. But should we consider territory the possibility that our public policies to contrasting the potential manage water and prevent disasters are of rainfall’s ill-fitted to our territory’s requirements? storage Certainly, in Peru, a postcolonial capacity of El Niño country, our concepts of urbanism and cycles and management of territory derive from the government’s legacy of the western approach which current or future was inevitably influenced by the western projects of territory. In terms of water and weather, flood defense western patterns of seasons and rainfalls and interbasin transfer. periods are very different. Peru and other nations within the tropics do not have four seasons or periods of stable rainfall. The ancient societies in Peru, as well as the other greatest ancient societies in the world, had to adapt to their territory. Historian Karl Wittfogel asserts that effective management of water was a key to the flourishing of the greatest societies in the ancient world, is one of the greatest influencers in the scenarios are extreme; our nature is the what he called Hydraulic Societies— weather of the Pacific Ocean basin, as well constant change. civilizations in Egypt, China, India, as conditions in Western Africa (drought Presumably, ancient societies Mexico, Mesopotamia and Peru. These periods) and India (monsoons), which considered their weather conditions societies experienced different weather make up a large area of the world. ENSO normal, not unstable, and events conditions from those of colonizing causes their weather variations so that it like monsoons or El Niño were not nations. Many factors influenced these can produce a diverse intensity of either considered disturbances or disasters but so-called hydraulic societies such as their droughts or floods in the same place in part of their territorial cycle. They knew tropical location and/or ENSO (El Niño different years. Our territories do not how to deal with their local assets and South Oscillation). El Niño, for example, have extreme changing scenarios, but our limitations. They faced droughts by taking

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would have happened if we would have The objective is to propose an alternative plan stored all the drops in wet years? Can we that could not only increase water availability and use as much water to avoid interbasin transfer projects that are costly and result in benefits to the regional economy, but also ecologically harmful? Can the collection accomplish flood defense necessities through a of rainfall be useful for flood protection? Water storage is the key to finding project that would be more economically efficient answers to all these questions. Ancient and ecologically sustainable. societies deployed an array of systems by managing superficial water (dams) and aquifers (which are considered “naturally advantage of sustainable measures such mindset realizes our extreme conditions built dams”). as aquifers, creating filtration galleries are normal? Then, what would be done? My thesis uses as a point of reference or qanats in Jordan or Peruvian desert What are the opportunities and the the new amount of water supply to civilizations; they dealt with floods mismatches? be produced by the Olmos Interbasin by creating agricultural patterns of My ongoing thesis seeks to reframe Transfer project, as well as its cost ridged fields in Colombian valleys; they the approach to the water in Piura’s valley, implications. The objective is to propose developed agriculture with dynamics the most damaged Peruvian region in the an alternative plan that could not only that anticipated weather extremes such 2017 El Niño. The National Government increase water availability and result in as floating agriculture in Bangladesh or proposed a flood protection plan which benefits to the regional economy, but chinampas in Mexico. They dealt with focuses on short-term solutions: taking also accomplish flood defense necessities shifting rainfall scenarios by creating out new sediments from the river channel through a project that would be more storage devices which would be useful in that would quickly divert the river flow economically efficient and ecologically dry years such as dams and percolation to the sea. This sounds paradoxical in sustainable. In addition, it would help grounds coupled with wells; the best an arid area needing to increase water to restore the water cycle by the aquifers examples are the stepwells and dams in availability, throwing away blue gold recharge which will help to recover India. Could you imagine how a territory to the sea. In the next severe El Niño, the local forest whose keystone species conquered by Aztecs or Mesopotamians in Piura’s river will continue to carry large such as the Algarrobo tree depend on Europe would have looked? What would amounts of sediments, raising the bed groundwater. The water infrastructure, the management of territory have been of the river channel and increasing flood such as the percolation basins or like? Water bodies filled with chinampas vulnerabilities again. ponds, also could be used as temporary and rivers’ flood plains converted into On the other hand, Piura is also agriculture or floating agriculture by ridged fields. struggling with expanding its agricultural villagers, depending on the shift between The western approach embedded frontier since the current capacity is not dry or wet years, as ancient societies did. many mismatches of water management enough. The Peruvian government has Due to climate change, contemporary in our territories because the colonizers sought to increase the productive land challenges seem more complicated; dry had base concepts informed by a different area interbasin transfer projects, such as years or arid regions will be drier and context. Harvard professor of economy Olmos Irrigation Project, which brings wet years or rainy regions will be wetter. and history David Landes asserted, water from the Amazon basin by a tunnel Peruvian coast must face these new “Tropical areas generally average enough that cuts across the Andes, the Olmos contexts appropriately, based on a real rainfall, but the timing is often irregular project provides 20,000 jobs and 100,000 understanding of its territory dynamics. and unpredictable, the downpours are acres for agriculture; however, this type of anything but gentle. The averages mean project is highly expensive and takes long nothing when one goes from one extreme time. Here is again the paradox of current Gustavo Diaz Paz is a Master in Urban to the other, from one year or one day to strategies: dealing with the abundance Design candidate at the Harvard Gradu- the next.” Yet most of the decision-makers and scarcity of water. ate School of Design. He graduated as an in our regions based their policies on the By understanding the local dynamics of architect from Pontificia Universidad average annual rainfall, as was the western precipitation in Piura’s watershed through Catolica del Peru. His research focuses approach. Instead, we ought to break history, my thesis project envisions a on water in the interplay of Urban- down the annual historical precipitation proposal that tackle at the same time ism, Landscape and Ecology; he has to look for opportunities and manage flood protection and water supply. Given been researching mostly in territories of our limitations. We must reframe our the extremely variable amount of annual extreme water dynamics such as India, mindsets about our territories. What if our rainfall, many questions arise: What the Middle East, California and Peru.

52 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 CHARTS BY GUSTAVO DIAZ PAZ CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

Landscape of Huánuco Valley at height of dry season.

Climate Change and Food Challenges and Opportunities in Tropical Mountains and Agrobiodiversity Hotspots By KARL S. ZIMMERER, ANDREW D. JONES, STEF DE HAAN, HILARY CREED-KANASHIRO, MILUSKA CARRASCO, KRYSTY MESA, MILKA TELLO, FRANKLIN PLASENCIA AMAYA, GISELA CRUZ GARCÍA AND RAMZI TUBBEH

THE RAINS HAD JUST BEGUN IN HUÁNUCO IN Only a week or two earlier, we were told, environment and society. We’re a diverse central Peru when we arrived in early the landscape of the Húanuco valley had team of faculty, scientists, field practitioners February 2016. This time of year is usually resembled the drab brown of the height of and students from multiple institutions. In midway through the roughly six-month the dry season. We had just begun a project Peru, we’re headquartered at the Instituto rainy season that stretches from October focused on biodiversity (agrobiodiversity) de Investigación Nutricional (IIN) in Lima. to May. Instead, the unseasonal heat in the food landscapes of indigenous small In Huánuco, we’ve been able to build on and months of drought that year were a landholders, as well as on their dietary the superb work of local, national and shock to people in Huánuco—and to us. patterns amid dynamic changes in the international organizations that include

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northern Argentina and Chile. Both the people and diverse environments of the Andean valleys have become another leading edge of global climate change impacts. The major impact of these climate changes falls on the indigenous people, the majority of Huánuco’s population, who produce and consume the highest levels of agrobiodiversity. In the Andes region of Huánuco, most speak the Quechua language intermixed with Spanish. These indigenous people range from agriculturalists residing in rural areas to their family members and migrant counterparts who live as first- and second-generation urbanites. Their role as consumers of agrobiodiversity remains crucial, though food consumption is changing in the Andes with profound

Team of faculty, scientists, field practioners and students comes from multiple institutions. consequences for health. Food and nutritional insecurity are agrobiodiversity experts such as Milka environments and unique biodiversity. widespread among indigenous people Tello and her colleagues and students Although locals are accustomed to the in the Andean countries. Climate at the Universidad Nacional Hermilio extreme seasonality of weather, this change compounds the vulnerability of Valdizan de Huánuco (UNHEVAL). variability has increased. Drought and these indigenous people, especially in Other members of our team are associated heat in the Andes often coincide with the drought-prone valley environments such with the International Center for Tropical El Niño-driven warming of the Pacific as Huánuco. Rain-fed agriculture in the Agriculture (CIAT) and the Universities Ocean with heavy rains and floods in the Andes has also become increasingly prone of Michigan, Pennsylvania State and coastal lowlands. This time, however, an to out-of-season extreme weather events Birmingham extended drought was already underway such as hail and frost (for example the Bridging the Andes and the Amazon, in Huánuco and other Andean regions widespread frost of 2007). Mountain Huánuco is widely recognized as a global before the ocean events of the past year. and hill areas more generally, which agrobiodiversity hotspot. This designation In 2017, El Niño Costero (coastal El extend widely in Latin America and the means that Huánuco farming and food Niño) triggered catastrophic floods in Caribbean as well as Asia and Africa, systems are distinguished by excep- Peru and Ecuador, a continuation of once functioned as indigenous “regions of tional concentrations of agrobiodiversity the strong El Niño effect from the two refuge” though they have become subject currently endangered. This risk emanates previous years. Global-scale climate to major impacts and spatial integration from such forces as agricultural, cultural change driven by the greenhouse gas involving national and global forces. and socioeconomic changes. The double emissions of industrial countries has meaning of “hotspot” quickly acquired continued to increase the strength and PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF THE a third dimension owing to the climate frequency of these events. The Costero HUÁNUCO AGROBIODIVERSITY- change impacts being felt in Huánuco. It demonstrated the regional warming of NUTRITION-HEALTH PROJECT is not only the climate that is changing. the Pacific Ocean off the western coast of (2016-2017) Closely related to environmental changes South America. Agriculture and food production are loss of resources and livelihoods, Elevated temperatures also accelerated are greatly affected by climate change. poverty and development changes that the melting of mountain glaciers. Peru’s Meanwhile, the individual and the often work to undermine the production glaciers have shrunk by more than forty community can use food choice as a and consumption of agrobiodiversity. percent in past decades. Though less pivotal way to exert influence on the The mile-deep trench of the Río publicized, the extremes of droughts environment. To the indigenous small Huallaga and its tributaries in Huánuco, warming and hailstorms have worsened landholders of Huánuco, these climate like many of the major valleys of the in Huánuco and the major valleys of the interactions run directly through their Andes Mountains, have quite unusual Andes from Colombia and Venezuela to myriad foodways. These foodways are

54 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS COURTESY OF KARL S. ZIMMERER CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

culturally distinctive, nutritionally (spelled toqush in the Quechua of of indigenous small landholders and vital and always evolving. The use of Huánuco). It is prepared most often additional in-depth interviews completed cultivated, semi-wild and wild foods through the anaerobic (without oxygen) with 37 individuals and households. Most depends on such factors as skills and fermentation of the local potato landrace of those interviewed gave us detailed knowledge, typically wielded by women. known as walas, resulting in a favorite examples of climate change effects on Women’s access to resources is therefore low-cost food valued for nutrition, food and agriculture. One example is the critically important. medicinal use and flavor. Quite odorous preparation of tocosh, which is typically For the sake of brevity we focus on a and resembling aged cheese, tocosh is undertaken outdoors and requires water few foods that illustrate the interactions fermented from six to eighteen months. at various stages. Several interviewees with climate change. One is tocosh Another food experiencing the effects mentioned how tocosh-making is of climate change is Andean maize. threatened because of diminishing water In Húanuco the most important supplies due to climate change. maize-based foods are a hominy-style Andean maize also offers a number preparation known as mote and kernels of important examples. Today the parched as kancha. Both tocosh and production and consumption of distinct maize, easy to include in various food Andean maize is very important in preparations and to transport, can be mountains valleys from Colombia and readily made into flours that contribute Venezuela to points as far south as to food security. Such foods—popular Argentina and Chile. Huánuco small throughout Huánuco—are central to landholders are recognized as producing the issues of agrobiodiversity, nutrition, and consuming the greatest biodiversity health and climate change. of Andean maize in Peru, which at the Preliminary results of our project national level is second only to Mexico in make use of surveys of 600 households the diversity of this crop. Maize foods grown as staples in local Top: Tocosh (spelled toqush in the Quechua) diets and nutrition are complemented by of Huánuco Middle: Such foods—popular the widespread growing and consumption throughout Huánuco—are central to the of beans. The suite of cultivated legumes issues of agrobiodiversity, nutrition, health includes Andean common beans, Andean and climate change. Bottom: Maize-based foods are a hominy-style preparation known lupines, broad or fava beans, and peas. as mote and kernels parched as kancha. More than half of the people surveyed in Huánuco cultivated maize in fields with beans and other crops in addition to gathered wild foods. One person remarked that the rich, multi-species biodiversity of a maize field typically resembles a garden. Certain types of Andean maize are well-suited to the flexible scheduling of planting and harvest that is vital to farmers facing climate change. For this purpose, they select among the local varieties of Andean maize (also known as landraces) that can mature more quickly. The highly varied maturation period makes it far easier to resist the effects of climate change. Huánuco farmers rely especially on the category of maize landraces known as wansa that better withstands heat and drought. Defined as the group of maize landraces best suited for the preparation of mote (mentioned above), wansa maize

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is made up of prominent types such as morocho. In short, the farmers’ food- In sum, these preliminary results demonstrate based classification of thewansa category of Andean maize also guides adaptive how the production and consumption of capacity in the context of climate change. biodiverse foods among Huánuco’s indigenous Andean maize is also well-suited to another of the major adjustments farmers small landholders show both adaptive capacity make to climate change, namely upslope and vulnerability in relation to climate change and movement. This shift is particularly promising for maize. The interviewees food and nutritional security. described the idea to move their fields of maize upslope by 250-400 meters of types suitable for the preparation of now, fewer than half of those interviewed elevation as the result of climate shifts. parched kancha (mentioned above), is have actually moved their fields of maize By contrast, they are being forced to comprised of locally valuable landraces upslope. Reasons vary, from lacking access reduce the production of Andean potatoes such as chuspillu. This use of gapia to upslope fields to broader decisions to and tuber crops since the area suitable maize therefore offers another curtail parts of their agriculture and engage for planting them at high elevation is prominent example whereby the food- further in non- and off-farm activities. shrinking. based classification of Andean maize One key interviewee detailed how she As the Huánuco farmers consider offers information that is important and her neighbors had lost access to their moving their fields, they choose among to farmers in considering potential upslope fields because of the government’s a category of maize landraces known as adaptations to climate change. misguided land reform. gapia, which has the adaptive capacity for But the vulnerable conditions of Meanwhile in the hotter, lower eleva- upslope movement. The culinary category Huánuco’s indigenous smallholders may tions of maize-growing some farmers of gapia, which they define as the maize eclipse such adaptive capacities. For have experienced water shortages caused

56 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO BY KARL S. ZIMMERER CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

by climate-change impacts on their SUPPORT INSTITUTIONS agrobiodiversity in their food systems. important community-wide management AND WHAT NEXT? But other powerful forces are under- of irrigation. In sum, these preliminary In light of the challenges described mining these goals. In particular, the results demonstrate how the production above, several organizations are committed expansion of cheap food in industrial and consumption of biodiverse foods to strengthening the adaptive capacity and food systems poses a serious risk. These among Huánuco’s indigenous small resilience of the livelihoods of indigenous intersecting challenges have become landholders show both adaptive capacity people in contexts of climate change. These a major juggernaut confronting the and vulnerability in relation to climate include government and international prospect of a sustainable future. change and food and nutritional security. agencies as well as non-governmental Unfortunately, this vulnerability is organizations. Since the beginning of our Karl Zimmerer, the 2016 DRCLAS compounded further by the expanding work, we’ve been mindful that our project Custer Visiting Scholar, is a professor consumption of low-cost, industrially depends on large numbers of extraordinary in the department of geography and the produced food. Such items include rice, institutions, collaborators, colleagues and department of agricultural economics, wheat noodles, cooking oil and sugar related work undertaken in Peru and sociology, and education at Pennsylvania including sugar-containing beverages elsewhere. These influences include both State University, where he also directs the and low-cost industrialized snack foods. our current networks and the various GEOSyntheSES lab (https://zimmerer- These food choices are driven by ready outstanding legacies of diverse specialists, geosyntheses.psu.edu/). Zimmerer’s recent availability and the rapid changes of both in Huánuco in particular and also publications include “Agrobiodiversity livelihoods and lifestyles, as well as more widely. and A Sustainable Food Future” (Nature poverty. Many of their climate-related initiatives Plants, 2017, with Stef de Haan) and “Ter- Preferences for food that is perceived focus on physical and social infrastructure ritorial Ordering’: A new mode of land as more “modern” and part of mainstream, for improved water resource management. use planning for urban-rural integration national cultural and racial identities also Our research results demonstrate the and next-generation conservation” in The play important roles. The consequences urgent need for agriculture and food Urban and the Territorial: Housing in include high rates of food and nutrition systems to become foundations of these Mérida (2017) edited by Diane E. Davis insecurity among the indigenous small climate projects. Vulnerability and and her colleagues at the Harvard Gradu- landholders of Huánuco. Nearly one resilience, in addition to adaptive capacity, ate School of Design. half of those surveyed in our research needs to be addressed. Without such had experienced food insecurity while a integration, attempts to address climate Andrew Jones is with the School of Public similar number noted the inadequacy of change may reinforce the trends of food Health at the University of Michigan. diversity in their diets. These trends are and nutrition insecurity. in sharp contrast to the culinary glamor Our project is utilizing these Stef de Haan and Gisela Cruz García and cultural celebration of Andean foods research results to offer specific are with the International Center for in the capital of Lima and elsewhere. insights and practical, forward-looking Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The local decline of agrobiodiversity solutions integrated across the fields of is being exacerbated by Peru’s national agrobiodiversity, nutrition and public Hilary Creed-Kanashiro, Miluska policies and several international policies. health. We’re committed to creating Carrasco and Krysty Mesa are at the Although too complicated a theme for insights that will be operational in the Investigación Nutricional in Lima, this short article, examples extend well context of dynamic environmental, where Franklin Plasencia Amaya is a beyond the Peruvian agrarian reform sociocultural, and economic circumstances. consultant. mentioned above. The conditional cash In sum, the agrobiodiversity of transfer program in Peru known as indigenous smallholders is diminishing Milka Tello is a faculty member in Juntos, for example, offers assistance to in Huánuco at a time when it is most agricultural sciences at the Universidad mothers in conditions of poverty. It does needed. This need is vital for addressing Nacional Hermilio Valdizan de Huánuco not, however, provide nutritional advice the goals of food and nutritional security (UNHEVAL). or education that would be culturally in addition to sustainability, not only in appropriate and include locally available Huánuco, but more broadly in Peru and Ramzi Tubbeh is a Peruvian Ph.D. stu- fresh foods. Meanwhile the climate globally. The farmers and workers in dent at Pennsylvania State University. change adaptation and risk-alleviation food systems with whom we collaborate projects favored by the international are showing us that global climate The authors acknowledge the support of community have often favored the import change, in addition to the shifts of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation of low-quality industrial foods rather than urbanization, migration and markets, can and Zimmerer also thanks DRCLAS and the strengthening of local food systems. potentially be compatible with the use of Tony Custer for their support.

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1. Protester carries a child-sized coffin made of paper in a 2016 demonstration in Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolivár protesting the deaths of Wayuu children. Climate Change and Resource Pressures A PHOTOESSAY BY NICOLÓ FILIPPO ROSSO

DROUGHTS IN ALREADY DRY PLACES There, longer droughts have meant of scientists have started to link more are lasting longer because of climate that the streams feeding the aquifers and intense droughts to climate change,” change and human intervention, but wells supplying water to the community observes the Washington D.C.-based sometimes it’s hard to distinguish got drier than usual, making any kind of Climate Reality Project on its website. where climate change leaves off and meaningful farming impossible. Because “That’s because as more greenhouse human exploitation of natural resources of the lack of water, the region’s goat gas emissions are released into the air, begins. A case in point is La Guajira in population is dwindling; the Wayuu are causing air temperatures to increase, northernmost Colombia, one of the running out of their main source of food. more moisture evaporates from land and country’s most remote and impoverished “[D]roughts can have different causes lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water. regions, home to more than 270,000 depending on the area of the world and Warmer temperatures also increase indigenous Wayuu. other natural factors, [and] the majority evaporation in plant soils, which affects

58 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS BY NICOLÓ FILIPPO ROSSO, WWW.NICOLOFILIPPOROSSO.COM, INSTAGRAM: @NICO.FILIPPOROSSO CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

The captions are from top to bottom and left to right. 2. Francia Epiayu, 19, is pregnant for the third time. One of her children died from malnutrition associated with lack of food and clean water. Francia became blind while pregnant. 3. People fill tanks with water from a water truck. Fucai Foundation, a Bogotá-based NGO, brings water daily to more than 32 communities around the municipality of Manaure. 4. Patilla Coal Pit- Cerrejon coal mine. The 330-foot deep pit allows the extraction of 400,000 tons of coal every month. Daily explosions damage the structure of neigh- boring houses, and respiratory diseases are common among local residents. Several cases have been brought against the company, which denies responsibility. 5. A bottle of Old Parr whiskey, filled with the traditional Chirrinchi brew, made from fermented sugar, lies on a tomb in a Wayuu cementery in La Guajira.

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6. Community members access water through a windmill built during the Rojas Pinilla dictatorship in the ’50s. 7. A young girl Arijuna (not Wayuu, in Wayuunaiki) at Manaure hospital. Malnutrition and respiratory diseases affect many in La Guajira. 8. At the grave of a two-year-old who died from sudden fever. Epidemics of fever have increased among Wayuu children since the rain started to fall again after four years of severe drought.

plant life and can reduce rainfall even The Cerrejón coal mine broke ground in There was, however, hope for change. more.” La Guajira in the 1980s and has since Initial plans for the construction of The survival of the Wayuus— become the world’s tenth largest. the El Cercado dam in 2011 included Colombia’s largest indigenous group— Cerrejón’s huge drilling operations, provisions to service nine municipalities is increasingly at risk. Climate change’s daily explosions and high demand of in the department. But the pipes that effects are complicated by the fact that water—which taxes a desert region should have brought water to the region La Guajira is also home to one of the already suffering from droughts—have were never connected to anything, as a world’s largest open-pit coal mines, contributed to the degradation of La consequence of unchecked corruption. Cerrejón, a conglomerate owned by BHP Guajira’s environment and the indigenous Instead, water from the Ranchería Billington, Glencore and AngloAmerican. population’s way of life. River—the Wayuu’s main source of

60 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS BY NICOLÓ FILIPPO, ROSSOWWW.NICOLOFILIPPOROSSO.COM, INSTAGRAM: @NICO.FILIPPOROSSO CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES

9. A woman sits beside her son at Manaure Hospital. Wayuu women often walk hours through the desert to reach the closest hospital, and when they arrive, they often find that the doctors do not speak their language. 10. A woman walks home with a tank of water. Peo- ple access water from rudimentary wells with water that is often not potable. 11. A Wayuu woman with her child at hospital of Manaure.

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12. Women cook a goat at the funeral of Maricela Uriana Epiayu, 22, who died of malnutrition in August 2016. She was mother of two sons under the age of five. 13. A woman cooks soup in 2016. Accord- ing to the Wayuu and their advocates, there is no longer enough water for the subsistence crops that once supplement- ed their poor diets. 14. A Wayuu woman stands in Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolivár in 2016 during a demonstration to protest the deaths of Wayuu children. She dresses in a black vest as a sign of mourning. water—was funneled to the mine and Tracking the number of Wayuu casualties people exposed to extreme poverty, thirst nearby farmers. is nearly impossible, as the community and environmental degradation. Telling Today, the community’s sources does not keep an official count of births their story can contribute to a deeper of water are rudimentary wells often or deaths. The lack of hard data makes it discussion about the humanitarian located a several hours’ walk from difficult to judge the scale of the problem consequences of cheap fossil fuel and its where the families have settled. Years of and draw international attention to the true costs in the context of climate change. drought mean the Wayuu must dig deep humanitarian crisis. The Cerrejón mine is to find water, and even then it is often a deadly resource conflict that threatens Nicoló Filippo Rosso is an Italian pho- undrinkable, causing many to fall ill. the survival of the Wayuu, an indigenous tographer based in Colombia.

62 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTOS BY NICOLÓ FILIPPO ROSSO, WWW.NICOLOFILIPPOROSSO.COM, INSTAGRAM: @NICO.FILIPPOROSSO. OPPOSITE PAGE PHOTO: SAMUEL BRAVO. PUBLIC SPACES, LOCAL SOLUTIONS

Trail steps in the Melimoyu reserve, developed by Patagonia Sur in Chile

Pablo Allard The Green Leap Forward • Krister Andersson and Patricio Valdivieso Why Local Governments Matter • Manuel Perló Cohen and Loreta Castro Reguera Mancera Design With Water

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Tsunami shelter and overlook, designed and built by Samuel Bravo and Armando Montero in the Melimoyu reserve. PHOTO: ARMANDO MONTERO.

64 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO PUBLIC SPACES, LOCAL SOLUTIONS

The Green Leap Forward Chile’s Innovative Shift in Conservation By PABLO ALLARD

CHILEAN ARCHITECT CAZÚ ZEGERS ONCE the deliberate action of radical groups stated, “The landscape is for Latin reclaiming land taken from indigenous America what the cathedrals are for communities. On the other side of the Europe.” The cultural power of territory country, in the arid zones of the Atacama has evaded every intention to dominate Desert, large-scale mining operations it for centuries. The Spanish conquerors are also challenging traditional villagers unsuccessfully tried to impose the grid over the use of scarce water resources. system mandated in the Law of the These tensions have led to unprecedented Indies, an operating system for territorial political conflicts such as the resignation domination. And nowadays conventional of two ministers from President Michelle urban planning has abdicated in the Bachelet’s economic team in August face of the spontaneous adaptation to 2017 because of the president’s decision the landscape of informal slums and to stop a 2.5 billion-dollar investment architecture in all our cities. for a mining project near one of the With nearly 4,000 miles of coastline main marine sanctuaries of Chile. In and expanding over more than 2,500 a territory stressed by the dynamics of miles along the Andes mountain range, massive extractive economies and the Chile features magnificent basins, fjords public’s awareness of its unique potential and glaciers, vast temperate evergreen for conservation, Chileans begin to rainforests, Patagonian grasslands and internalize the long-term commitments forests with some of the highest levels of of such dilemmas. biodiversity and endemism, as well as the In this context, the emergence driest desert on the planet and some of of territorial and environmental the most productive agricultural land in conservation initiatives in Chile assumes the continent. The Global 200 Initiative, great relevance. So far in the 21st century, promoted by the World Wildlife Fund the Chilean state has managed to establish (WWF) together with the World Bank, national strategies for land conservation has classified some of these ecosystems and biodiversity, with the ratification of such as the Valdivian forest among the the Convention on Biological Diversity priority conservation sites worldwide. and the approval of the Native Forest Act In this context, the Chilean economy in 2008. Despite the lack of an appropriate is strongly based on the extraction legal framework, groups of philanthropists, and exploitation of bulk copper, wood individuals, corporations and foundations, cellulose, salmon and fish powder, as well as NGOs, have been leading agricultural produce and most recently initiatives parallel to governmental lithium. These highly intensive extractive efforts to create a broad spectrum of activities produce environmental private protected areas. This interest in and social impacts at a regional, even the generation of natural, human and planetary, scale that are challenging financial capital to generate a structure the country’s development model. The that allows the protection in perpetuity massive wildfires suffered during the of private lands—particularly in areas Chilean summer of 2017 were in part of high environmental value—has been fueled by massive monocultures of pines accompanied by remarkable innovations, and eucalyptus, but also exacerbated by both in legal and territorial planning areas.

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The first efforts to promote private conservation came from wealthy philan- With the help of local consultants in conservation thropists such as Douglas Tompkins, founder of the clothing brands The North and landscape design, a territorial planning model Face and Esprit, who invested nearly was defined where at least 85 percent of the land 300 million dollars in the purchase of more than 1.5 million acres of land in stayed under protection and only a maximum the Chilean Patagonia, or even wealthy of 15 percent was reserved for profitable low- locals like Chilean President Sebastián Piñera who bought 291,500 acres of native impact uses, namely eco-tourism and real estate forest on the island of Chiloe in 2004 to development under strict conditions such as design create the Tantauco Park. In addition to these philanthropists, several foundations, guides and a co-ownership regulation. corporations and individuals began to look for alternative ways to protect private and entrepreneurship. To consolidate his recycled an existing mechanism in the areas in Chile. One of the main challenges vision, Adams articulated a profitable Chilean legislation called “servidumbre was the lack of legally binding instruments conservation model. With the help of local voluntaria,” or voluntary right of use, such as land trusts to zone private land as consultants in conservation and landscape under which it was possible to register conservation areas for perpetuity, as well design, a territorial planning model was and secure in perpetuity the conservation as the lack of tax incentives to promote defined where at least 85 percent of the areas in each of the seven ecosystems private investment in these issues. land stayed under protection and only recovered by Patagonia Sur, totaling more In this context, the work carried out a maximum of 15 percent was reserved than 103 square miles of private land. by Patagonia Sur, led by Warren Adams for profitable low-impact uses, namely The Patagonia Sur experience allowed (MBA ’95), is especially significant. After eco-tourism and real estate development the creation of the first Land Trust in an early success in the world of digital under strict conditions such as design Chile: “Fundación Tierra Austral,” an startups, Adams envisioned one of the guides and a co-ownership regulation. independent non-profit organization first for-profit conservation funds in the As an example of the Patagonia Sur that safeguards strict compliance with world. Founded in 2007, Patagonia Sur model, the “Valle California” project in the conservation plans committed purchases and permanently protects the remote province of Palena considered by the developers. Most consultants, scenically remarkable and ecologically a protected area of ​​8,105 acres and seven architects and planners who participated valuable ecosystems in Chilean Patagonia. Limited Development Areas (ADL), in developing conservation plans for The Patagonia Sur model aspired with only 25 lots of approximately 22 Patagonia Sur, have extended the model to purchase 98,850 acres in territories acres each. These lots were sold at prices to other initiatives—in a sort of open of high environmental value—either ranging from $350,000 to three million source agreement—so other foundations, a valley or a basin—for which, after dollars depending on their attributes. owners, cooperatives and corporations a scrupulous environmental baseline In this way, an investor bought land at can participate in the protection of study, a reforestation and conservation a higher value than the market price in private lands, adding, up to date, more plan was developed in order to guarantee nearby properties, but his investment than 116,200 acres (181 square miles) of the recovery and care of its biodiversity guaranteed perpetual maintenance, profitable conservation master plans in over time. The business model originally access and co-ownership of a natural Chile. created three income streams—an reserve of more than 7,500 acres. The Some critics like George Holmes, ecotourism venture that works on a design of the ADLs, as well as the low professor at the Sustainability Research vacation club or membership-fee model, impact infrastructure and constructions, Institute at the University of Leeds, call a land brokerage and a carbon-offset had to deal with the climatic and logistical these initiatives “philanthrocapitalism” business that sells credits to schools and difficulties characteristic of such isolated because they combine intentions as corporations. The long-term value of areas. These difficulties led to the use diverse as conservation and for-profit conserving territories as virgin and remote of vernacular building techniques and businesses; however, they recognize as these would generate the expected an architectural language appropriate that—in the absence of resources or returns for investors. The challenge to the values ​​embraced by southern governmental mechanisms to promote was how to guarantee the resources to Patagonia. Finally, to guarantee that non-profit conservation—new models finance the conservation plans. This is more than 85 percent of the ecosystems such as Patagonia Sur could make when innovation converged with sound could be protected for life, the legal conservation more effective in emerging planning, architectural design, legislation office of Roberto Peralta interpreted and countries like Chile. As Adams once

66 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO: FELIPE ZEGERS, FZW CONSERVACIÓN RENTABLE. PUBLIC SPACES, LOCAL SOLUTIONS

mentioned in an interview for the Harvard the recognition of his legacy. square miles) of sea and land conservation, Business School, “We learned that market- The Tompkins’ donation along with which constitutes an increase from five based solutions can be effective and the many private conservation projects percent to 38 percent of its protected land efficient tools to augment the work of and the Chilean National Parks Network and sea in just four years. Chile leaves an governments and NGOs on social issues.” make up a new protected area of 11​​ million irreversible legacy of conservation for the In fact, Patagonia Sur nested several acres (17,187 square miles), equivalent to country and the world that capitalized the nonprofit spin-offs, like the Patagonia the entire surface of ​​Denmark, to which is vision, commitment and consciousness Sur Foundation, which helped nearby added the recent expansion of the Marine of public and private initiatives in an communities; the Melimoyu Ecosystem Protected Areas of Juan Fernández, Cape emerging and still-developing country. Research Institute (MERI), which studies Horn and Easter Island. With President blue whales and other endangered species; Bachelet’s approval last February of these Pablo Allard is the 2018 Robert F. Ken- and Reforest Patagonia, a public-private marine parks, Chile confirms its new role nedy Visiting Professor of Latin Ameri- campaign to plant a million indigenous as a global leader in ocean conservation, can Studies at the Harvard Graduate trees in Torres del Paine and other national protecting 103 million acres (160,937 School of Design. He is also Dean of parks in Chile. square miles) of marine ecosystems, with the Faculty of Architecture and Arts at In June 2016, and after a decade a commitment to reach 395 million acres Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile and since Adams established the profitable (617,187 square miles) of Marine Protected principal at Allard & Partners Land- conservation model of Patagonia Areas in the coming years. scape and Urban Design, where he col- Sur, the Chilean Congress passed the In summary, Chile has established laborated in the creation of the Patagonia first law establishing the “Derecho more than 360 million acres (562,500 Sur conservation model. Real de Conservación” (Real Right of Conservation)—thanks to the work of the NGOs like “The Nature Conservancy,” “Así Conserva Chile” and several other organizations. This law grants every land owner the right to protect the environmental value, certain attributes or functions of a property in perpetuity. Similar initiatives to Patagonia Sur have been replicated in the last decade in Chile adding more than 300 private protected areas in more than 3.9 million acres (6,093 square miles), equivalent to 2.2 percent of the total area of ​​the country. Along with the enactment of the Real Right of Conservation Law—and after the tragic death of philanthropist Douglas Tompkins in a kayak accident—his widow Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and the foundation that bears his name fulfilled his posthumous desire to donate to the Chilean state about 988 thousand acres (1,543 square miles) of the park Pumalín (an area greater than the state of Rhode Island) in March 2017. Once perceived as a threat to Chilean geopolitical stability by the national government in the mid- 90s, the perseverance and legitimacy of Tompkins’ commitment to the sustainable development of Chilean Patagonia found the necessary political ally in President

Michelle Bachelet, who enthusiastically Views of Valle California reserve, the first for-profit conservation initiative developed by endorsed his will and opened the way for Patagonia Sur.

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Why Local Governments Matter Adapting to a Changing Climate in Chile By KRISTER ANDERSSON AND PATRICIO VALDIVIESO

WHEN CONFRONTED WITH THE NEED TO vulnerable to these events. An enormous suggests that local governments that are address climate change, we environ- amount of damage has already interrupted richer and have highly trained technical mentalists often set our hopes on global normal life and inflicted huge economic personnel are the high performers, but our environmental agreements with strong losses on the region. For example, in evidence suggests otherwise. enforcement capabilities. We look toward 2008, a severe drought in central and Through the systematic analysis the implementation of international southern Chile caused emergencies in of observations made in hundreds of treaties such as the Paris Agreement and fifty municipalities, and the national interviews with local leaders, and by using the Kyoto Protocol. It is a natural reaction: government spent about US$30.5 million computer simulations, we’ve found quite climate change is a global problem and just on trucking animal feed and drinking unexpected findings on more than one hence we need a strong and coordinated water to affected communities. In 2015, occasion. global response. the floods in northern Chile caused an This is true, especially if we limit estimated US$1.5 billion in reported SURPRISE #1: MORE MONEY DOES our discussion to mitigation activities— damages to about 8,000 homes and local NOT MEAN BETTER ADAPTATION that is, interventions that will reduce infrastructure. And most recently, the greenhouse gas emissions. However, massive wildfires in 2017 destroyed nearly Documenting cases of vulnerable once we broaden the discussion to include 1,500 homes and 250,000 acres of forest, Chilean municipalities at risk during the climate change adaptation—the actions costing the government about US$330 period 2009-2014, we’ve observed that we can take to cope with a climate that is million. local governments with similar levels of already changing—the importance of local Most national governments in Latin financial resources and exposure to climate- political action becomes more apparent. America and the Caribbean recognize related risk differ a great deal in their This is because local governments are the need to strengthen local governments efforts to improve critical infrastructures responsible for much of the public to prepare for such events, but progress and maintenance. Our comparative infrastructure that we will need to survive has been slow. In our research, we have analysis of three municipalities—the in a world with more frequent and more documented what local governments are agriculture and viticulture municipality severe extreme events such as floods, currently doing in response to the threat of Cauquenes, the fishing and mining droughts, storms and wildfires. of extreme events. We have conducted a municipality of Lebu, and the forestry and In many ways, our future quality of life large number of interviews in some 170 tourism municipality of Panguipulli (see depends on how our local governments are local governments in both the United map)—showed that Panguipulli stands able to plan and invest in infrastructure States and Chile. What is quite clear from out for its superior performance in taking improvements. Local governments can these interviews is that an enormous action to adapt to extreme climate-related help save lives during extreme events by amount of variation exists in what local events although all three have very similar anticipating the impacts of these events governments are doing to respond to levels of financial resources for their and investing in prevention measures the threat of extreme events. Most of municipal administrations. such as building flood-proof bridges, our research is about figuring out why Our statistical analyses of all Chilean retaining walls along mountain roads, some local governments more than municipalities confirm this lack of more efficient irrigation systems, enhanced others decide to invest their scarce public relationship, as we find no evidence water recycling capacity, better emergency- resources in infrastructure improvements. in support of a correlation between a response systems and public subsidies to In this short essay, we share some of our municipal administration’s wealth and its citizens to weather-proof their homes. most surprising results. performance in adaptation activities. While Scientists predict that extreme weather First, and perhaps most surprisingly, more money does not always mean better events and natural disasters will become we have found little evidence in support performance, it is important to recognize more frequent and more serious as a of commonly held notions about what that all municipalities do need basic result of global warming. Latin American makes some local governments perform financial stability to be able to make the and Caribbean societies are particularly better than others. Conventional wisdom necessary infrastructure improvements.

68 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 MAP SOURCE: VALDIVIESO AND ANDERSSON (2017) PUBLIC SPACES, LOCAL SOLUTIONS

these factors don’t explain much of the variation, what does?

EXPLANATION 1: WELL-DEVELOPED LOCAL INSTITUTIONAL NETWORKS PROVIDE AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT FOR ADAPTATION WORK Through our research, we have come to appreciate the importance of looking beyond single-factor explanations such as money or technical capacity. The reality on the ground is complex: local governments are constrained by central government mandates and rules, and often struggle to respond even to the most pressing problems, not to mention long-term challenges such as preparing to adapt to climate-related events. To make sense of this complexity it helps to consider a combination of factors to explain why some local governments perform better than others. A step in this direction is our efforts to study local institutional networks—how local governance actors connect and relate to one another on particular issues. For Location of Cauquenes, Lebu and Panguipulli example, by measuring the multiple ways that local governance actors decide to procedures with training given to their connect to other actors on issues related SURPRISE #2: personnel. However, Lebu continues to to the adaptation to extreme events in HIGHLY TRAINED MUNICIPAL struggle to reduce its vulnerability to Chile, our analysis has shown that the STAFF IS NOT ESSENTIAL. extreme events and remains one of the density of these networks is systematically Since 2000, Chilean local governments coastal municipalities least prepared linked to local government performance have modernized their municipal to confront such events. During the in adaptation activities. structures following guidelines from period 2009-2014, Lebu hardly invested The importance of local institutional national legislation and decentralization in infrastructure and maintenance networks is perhaps best illustrated policies. This has included introducing with its own resources. Our statistical by the case of Panguipuilli, where the new internal regulations, managerial analysis finds that variables that seek local government has cultivated strong procedures, offices of environment and to measure the technical capacity of a relationships with actors operating at a disaster risk reduction, civil protection local government, such as the education variety of governance scales (e.g., local, plans, environmental ordinances, as well of the mayor and the number of regional, national and international) as hiring more personnel and providing personnel per capita, are not correlated and these relationships are characterized more training opportunities. to adaptation performance among local by high levels of trust and reciprocity. However, these changes in local governments in Chile. It appears that if These well-functioning relationships government structures, procedures, local governments are to be successful, facilitated the access to new knowledge, and technical know-how have not they do need some basic technical and resources and technical support, which uniformly produced better performance administrative capacity, but there are were essential to identify, plan, and when it comes to investing more in other factors that are more important implement infrastructure improvements critical infrastructure. For example, in producing high-performing local (which are an integral part of adaptation the local government of Lebu has governments. work). And even though Panguipuilli effectively introduced new managerial These findings beg the question: If isn’t richer, doesn’t have more and better

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Discussion group with social leaders of the communes of Chiloe (Region X Los Lagos) moderated by thesis student Ilcia Nahuelquén (standing) trained personnel and doesn’t operate under relationships with the public sector intensity) network, characterized by special rules, these networks are much more at regional and national scales. Lebu reciprocal relationships among a diversity developed than in other municipalities such presented a similar network, with a of governance actors, including public, as Cauquenes and Lebu. majority of non-reciprocal linkages; Lebu’s private and civil society members. By comparison, Cauquenes’ govern- network also showed a preponderance of ance network was much smaller, covering public-sector institutions. Panguipulli had EXPLANATION 2: POLITICAL fewer issues, and it emphasized external the most diverse and largest (and highest- CHAMPIONS AND LEADERS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR ADAPTATION Discussion Group with social leaders In order for the local institutional of the communes networks to develop and eventually of Chiloe (Region X flourish, we have found that it helps if there Los Lagos. Partici- pants include Pedro is a local political champion—or group of Bahamonde (left; individuals—who lead by example and take Governor of Chiloé the initiative to identify, invite, convoke and during the environ- mental crisis of the connect with others who have compatible Red Tide, 2016, and (but not always identical) objectives and currently a member worldviews. Again, the political leadership of the council of national monu- in Panhuipuilli provides a case in point. ments ); and Felipe Mayor Alejandro Kohler is a political Montiel, renowned entrepreneur, trained as a journalist, with historian of Chiloé and director of a strong supportive network—he enjoys the Castro Museum strong electoral support and a supportive (right). municipal council. With experience in a successful tourism-related microenterprise and his vision that sustainable tourism

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on how to address adap- the municipality—then the likelihood tation challenges, including of making these investments increases support to municipal study dramatically (more than forty percent commissions. Municipal increase compared to unfavorable local staff was invited to share conditions). its expertise during council The bad news is that among Chile’s meetings; the commissions 346 municipal governments, only a very actively explored new few enjoy these favorable conditions. The agreements and cooperation good news is that there are ways through with outside organizations. which external actors may contribute to a Academics, business owners more propitious institutional climate—by and citizens at large were supporting local leaders and facilitating all invited to report on their efforts to develop local governance physical and environmental networks related to adaptation—which conditions; the municipality may ultimately improve the adaptive held open hearings to capacities of local governance actors. discuss the mayor’s and Research results on risk factors presented in the munici- council’s proposals. pality San Juan de la Costa (Region X Los Lagos) Krister Andersson is a professor This experience suggest of Political Science at University of that individual or collective Colorado at Boulder. He acknowledges can open new horizons for the people of leadership may increase the likelihood financial support for his field research Panguipulli, the mayor (who served in of local government engagement in risk from the National Science Foundation 2000–2008) led a process to create a local reduction in places where municipal (grants SMA-1328688 and BCS- political consensus to invest in critical institutional contexts have high levels 1115009). infrastructure, tourism and sustainable of support (internal and external). Contact: [email protected] development. This vision was consistent Leadership may have a key role in initiating with a combination of international institutional change, but leaders can be Patricio Valdivieso is Professor of cooperation agreements, legislative held back by lack of support, institutional Political Science of the Center for reforms and provisions of budget laws to inertia, organizational cultures and political Regional Development Studies and Pub- strengthen the multi-sectorial approach for factors. They need trusting relationships lic Policy at Universidad de los Lagos, infrastructure investments in vulnerable and supportive networks. Chile. He acknowledges financial municipalities such as Panguipuilli (which support from the National Fund for Sci- is relatively rural and remote). SUPPORTING LOCAL LEADERS entific and Technological Development, At the municipal level, Mayor Kohler Our research has shown us that FONDECYT, (Grants 1140672 and began the institutional change by reforming political action is rarely driven by a single 1181282) as well as from the Institute the internal structure and operational factor or event. Many factors interact or for Research in Market Imperfections rules of the local government: he obtained act in combination to produce an enabling and Public Policy (ICM IS130002); council approval of new regulations and environment for action in the face of Ministry of Economy, Development ordinances (2004, 2005) and created weather- and climate-related risk. One of and Tourism. Contact: the Department of Territorial Planning the approaches we have found particularly [email protected] and Environment within the planning useful to communicate this insight is office. He introduced more computerized computer simulations. These tools allow The research presented in this article administrative routines, recruited thirty us to model which combination of local is based, in good part, on Valdivieso, P. young professionals, strengthened conditions among Chilean municipalities and Andersson, K. 2017. Local Politics of coordination among departments and would increase their investments in the Environmental Disaster Risk Management: created more external links for municipal adaptation of critical infrastructure. What Institutional Analysis and Lessons from planning. The local government made these simulations show is that when a Chile. Journal of Environment and alliances and collaborative agreements with local government enjoys a combination Development 26(1): 51 – 81 and Valdivieso, diverse individuals and organizations in the of favorable local conditions—a well- P.E., Andersson, K.P., Villena-Roldan, B. private, civic and governmental worlds. developed local institutional network that 2017. Institutional Drivers of Adaptation Institutional change introduced during spans across multiple governance levels, in Local Government Decision Making: Mayor Kohler’s term set the stage for strong internal administrative efficiency Evidence from Chile. Climatic Change new and more inclusive working routines and high levels of civic engagement in 143(1):157–17.

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Design with Water Rediscovering Public Spaces in Mexico City

By MANUEL PERLÓ COHEN AND LORETA CASTRO REGUERA MANCERA

WATER IS A KEY TO THE FOUNDING AND of warmer air holding more water vapor. conditions of the Mexico basin. The shaping of cities. The first humans We are now subject to shorter but more changing water levels of the lake or more established settlements alongside bodies intense rain seasons, leading to an specifically, the five different wetlands of water. Whether these populations increased risk of flooding. At the same that became a sole water body during the flourished or not depended largely on time, warmer air evaporates more quickly rainy season, provided a hint for how to smart water strategies. Whenever these water from surfaces, drying out faster harness them. Xochimilcans developed failed, cities struggled to guarantee their areas where it is not precipitating. a strategy for constructing large-scale, future. The city is subject to a paradox of thin and long woven baskets, filled with Mexico City is now a sprawling scarcity of drinking water and excess of earth previously excavated from the megalopolis of 22 million people. The city rain. It has repeatedly tried to break the shallow waters of the lake ground. With was an excellent example of landscape unsatisfactory dialogue with the liquid, the aid of roots from the native ahuejote as infrastructure when it was founded but the nature of the basin obliges tree, the baskets became grounded to at the center of a 425-square-mile it to constantly deal with this cycle. the water body. They were separated system of lakes, and designed through a The relationship between the natural from one another by canals, providing system of canals and chinampas. As the landscape, the form of the city, water and transportation access around the area indigenous city evolved into a colonial its citizens have spurred our research and and good communication with the dry one, the original waterscape turned into projects. land. Along with a continuous exposure one of the largest, seemingly endless, and to a humid environment, the soil on the mostly dry urban fabrics. To cope with THE HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE chinampa, mineralized through ancient the results of colonial and subsequent INFRASTRUCTURE IN MEXICO CITY volcanic activity, resulted in one of the urban development, monumental Mexico’s basin doesn’t drain anywhere. most efficient and productive agriculture and sophisticated water management In more scientific terms, it’s endhorreic methods worldwide, having as much as infrastructures have been constructed or closed, with no natural exit for its five harvesting periods in the course throughout the last five centuries. water. Thus, the system of lakes and of a year. This ancient agricultural These water management systems swamps, nourished by the runoffs of the method is undoubtedly one of the most help the city survive, but they also have surrounding mountains, became the sophisticated examples of landscape severe consequences: subsidence (the channel for water. Although humans first design. It was later expanded and turned gradual caving in or sinking of an area settled in the basin some 10,000 ago, the into an urban design strategy in 1325 of land), floods and overexploitation population significantly increased in the when Mexicas came to inhabit Lake of the aquifer. These outcomes are 12th century when the so-called seven Texcoco and founded Great Tenochtitlán provoking the collapse of infrastructure, Nahuatlacas tribes began to establish (today’s Mexico City). meaning that one out of four Mexico themselves on the shores of the lake The chinampa system is definitely a City inhabitants do not have guaranteed system. They found excellent living landscape infrastructure, as it provided access to a daily supply of water. In conditions, securing the provision of urbanized areas in the Basin of Mexico contemporary Mexico City, water has water, fertile grounds and a temperate with a system to domesticate the ground, disappeared from the urban imagination. climate. Some of the towns founded by enjoy fertile agricultural lands, foster Its citizens have lost a necessary link with the different tribes, specifically those mobility and transportation, make the liquid, one which guarantees the located in the southern areas around the use of a dynamic medium to negotiate survival of the city. Xochimilco and Chalco lakes, developed with rising water levels, and devise a Moreover, the drastic transformation one of the most ancient, efficient and still site-specific and sustainable strategy of Mexico City’s natural context can be practiced agricultural techniques: the to deal with the context. It also meant a decisive aspect to accelerate climate chinampas. a continuous exposure of the society to change. In the Basin of Mexico rainfall The chinampa system emerges from the basin’s natural conditions. Water was patterns have been modified as a result a deep understanding of the natural present always, sometimes flooding the

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city, but always an important part of the city, causing prejudicial floods. These out the water: the new city decided to life of its inhabitants. Each of them knew happened often, forcing the new decision deny water. the benefits and threats of water and was makers to implement an infrastructure Thus, in modern Mexico City water able to understand and learn the abilities strategy. is no longer present. Of the 425-square- to survive in this land. At the beginning of the 17th century, mile water network, fewer than twenty the city officials decided between two square miles remain. The decision WATERSCAPE TO DRY LAND flood control projects. The first proposed to dry out the water network created The Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan the construction of enormous, dike-like empty, dry ground—ultimately soft and led to a complete transformation of the infrastructure similar to those used by inappropriate, but nevertheless ideal to city’s urban form. Through the Laws of the Aztec rulers to deal with rising levels of expand Mexico’s urban fabric. Mexico Indies, Spain was able to set a standard water by separating the city area from City’s urbanized ground runs for more regarding regulations to establish or its adjacent lakes. The second proposal than 965 square miles, occupying most redesign cities in the New World. These advocated the artificial opening of of what was a lake. Thousands of deep were not site-specific and, in the case of the basin by drilling a tunnel to drain wells have been dug in order to provide its Tenochtitlán, their application meant a the lake system on its northern end. inhabitants with water, causing disturbing strong clash with the natural conditions. The tunnel strategy was chosen and ground subsidence. The city also occupies European Renaissance cities, planned commissioned to Heinrich Mertens, a the permeable hillsides, blocking natural through a grid of streets that connected a German engineer. aquifer recharge, and making it hard to series of squares constructed with massive This choice of strategy defined how substitute the extracted liquid. Moreover, stone were difficult to implement in a Mexico City would deal with its water fast runoffs coming down the hills provoke waterscape. The original canal system that supply during the following 400 years: huge volumes of the water to accumulate structured Tenochtitlan’s urban fabric was drilling, piping and pumping the liquid in the lower parts of the basin, making replaced by roads, displacing water with both in and outside the basin. It also it impossible for any drainage system to earth. This substitution meant that, when meant the disappearance of an intrinsic hold and manage these amounts in the lake water rose during the rainy season, and essential element of historical use, desired time. Four hundred years after a it would have no place to flow within the which involved either digging or driving decisive action was taken to prevent floods

The purple jacaranda trees adorn public spaces.

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in Mexico City, the city is still vulnerable. government management. However, the in September 2018) will host a ten- contest demonstrated the community’s acre public space with cultural, sports REDISCOVERING PUBLIC SPACE interest and understanding of diverse and recreational programs. Structured AS A PARALLEL HYDRAULIC possibilities for managing water. through a grid of platforms, squares and INFRASTRUCTURE While working on the Iztapalapa project, pathways, the park will triplicate the In 1960, the lake system was almost we stumbled across La Quebradora, a original tree count and introduces completely desiccated. The city created site with ideal characteristics for the only endemic vegetal species, typical of the extensive infrastructure to import and first hydrourban acupuncture project: volcanic stone context. Moreover, it will export water—bringing it from the permeable ground, property of the provide the surrounding population with a western adjacent basins, using it, and borough, and surrounded by a dense museum, a library, an open-air theatre, an then sending it away to the east—and urban area lacking public spaces. The outdoor gym, multi-use courts, children’s assure the city’s survival in terms of water research team worked on a conceptual playgrounds and spaces to develop indoor access. However, the water is running design proposal that, after years of activities. The park also will have public out. The city is consuming the liquid hard work, was finally presented to the toilets, an important necessity in an area from its neighbors’ basins, evoking a borough representative. In 2015, the of the city where the population lacks a heated reaction from some municipalities. However, at the same time as it suffers from water shortages, the city is unable However, at the same time as it suffers from to manage the enormous amounts of rain and wastewater that inundate it during water shortages, the city is unable to manage the the storm season. enormous amounts of rain and wastewater that Several experts have urged decision- makers to implement a management system inundate it during the storm season. alongside the current one. The work we have been doing builds upon these efforts, project was accepted, and the borough continuous water supply. but focuses the solution on grassroots hired a team coordinated by us from La Quebradora will serve an area of acupunctural projects (hydrourban the National Autonomous University of 28,000 inhabitants who lack recreational acupunctures). Our approach bets on Mexico (UNAM) to develop a complete areas and regular access to water. The hundreds of small-scale, disseminated study and construction plans for the park’s open borders will emphasizing interventions instead of large-scale Parque Hídrico Quebradora. pedestrian mobility and aiming to infrastructure solutions. We focus on Parque Hídrico Quebradora reduce insecurity. It sets a paradigm public spaces and their capability to serve introduces a contemporary for a new understanding of public both as soft decentralized infrastructure waterscape that seeks to attack one space, where it will not only serve as (meaning less dependent on energy, using of the city’s largest problems: water an aesthetic venue but, more importantly, the characteristics of the natural context to management. The idea is to reconfigure as an infrastructure managing the most manage the liquid, such as absorption, the hydraulic system by capturing intense precious resource in the city: water. retention, treatment through wetlands), water runoff and diverting it into an La Quebradora, currently under as well as social-integration and infiltration basin, thus reducing urban construction, is the first project in recreational spaces. floods in the area. In addition, the venue a more ambitious strategy, in which In 2012 we started working for the treats wastewater through a joint water public spaces are intended to serve borough of Iztapalapa, one of the areas treatment plant and wetland system. This diverse purposes, ranging from most affected by scarcity and drainage liquid will be used for the park’s hydric decentralized infrastructures to water of water. We asked the community to sustainability and redistribution in culture broadcasters. These thousands present small- scale alternative water surrounding areas. Additionally, it of sites spread throughout the urban management solutions in public spaces. harvests and filters rainwater that fabric will become the medium through We also demanded a budget of less may be used for drinking. The park which water will return into the image than US$500,000.00. Surprisingly, we will be the first decentralized soft- of the city, not only as an aesthetic received more than 200 projects, from water infrastructure in the city, setting element, but more importantly, as a vital which an expert jury selected eight a standard for any future urban resource. Sometimes scarce, sometimes winners. Although these projects received design interventions, in which water abundant, water will always be in need of awards, they were not implemented management becomes seminal. an intelligent management through clear because the moment in which they were Along with its hydric functions, strategies provided by the form of the presented coincided with changes in La Quebradora (to be inaugurated city and the awareness of its inhabitants.

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Manuel Perló Cohen is a Mexico City- based economist educated at UNAM and a city planner with a degree from UC-Berkeley. He is a tenured researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales at UNAM and teaches graduate students in city planning, urban sociology and environmental policies. He combines his academic research with applied projects that can help change the urban water system in Mexico City.

Loreta Castro Reguera Mancera, MAUD 2010, is a Mexico City- based architect and urban designer. She teaches at the UNAM School of Architecture and has an architectural design studio: Taller Capital. She focuses on the design of public spaces capable of managing water through soft infrastructure. www.tallercapital.mx

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A Tale of Survival A REVIEW By MARGUERITE FEITLOWITZ

Prisoner of Pinochet: My Year president wanted, more than Island—Cabinet members, in a Chilean Concentration anything, to save his country government ministers, con- Camp by Sergio Bitar, from civil war. gressional representatives, translated by Erin Goodman With his regime long senators, mayors, party and with foreword and notes under threat, Allende had in- union leaders, a university by Peter Winn (Madison: structed his Cabinet to secure president, the director of University of Wisconsin Press, safe houses in the event of the national bank, Allende’s 2017) dire emergency. Bitar drove personal physician and press to the modest neighbor- secretary. Among these men On September 11, 1973, hood of La Florida where a (they were all men), was at about eight o’clock in the woman who had worked for Orlando Letelier, who served, morning, Sergio Bitar, one his mother and known him successively, as Allende’s of Allende’s top economic as a child would shelter him. Minister of Foreign Affairs, advisers and the Minister of A day later, Bitar was ordered Interior, and Defense, and Mining, received a phone call via radio broadcast to report who would be assassinated by from a colleague: the military to the Ministry of Defense. an agent of Pinochet’s secret was on the move. Downtown was unstoppable. Although he had offers of service in September 1976, in Santiago was surrounded by Bitar recounts his experi- asylum from several embas- Washington, D.C. soldiers. It had to be the coup ences in this 1987 book, sies, Bitar refused to flee; Located in the Strait of they’d been expecting. Bitar’s translated for the first time Allende’s surviving Cabinet Magellan in the Tierra del first thoughts were “diffuse.” into English, in an even tone: members, congressional Fuego archipelago, Dawson Since Chile’s constitutional- from the moment of his cap- representatives and political Island has a long history as ist military had neutralized ture, he clearly made a pact leaders had all got the same an internment camp. Inhab- previous coup attempts, he with himself to stay alert, order. Some of these men ited for thousands of years by prepared to head downtown observant, lucid and mentally had, like Bitar, left their safe the Selknam and other indig- himself for a meeting he had organized. He kept track, houses; others had remained enous tribes, it was seized in scheduled with CORFO, the as best he could, of dates, at the presidential palace the 19th century by European agency that managed the knowing that timekeeping is during the bombing and settlers, miners, gold-diggers public economy and had especially hard for those in since their capture had been and bounty hunters who cor- nationalized the country’s captivity. held incommunicado. The ralled the local Indians after major industries. But then, But that’s getting ahead reunion (if that’s the word) taking their lands, dwell- the one radio station still of the story. That fateful Sep- was emotional: they were ings and animals. After the functioning announced that tember 11, war planes were relieved to see dear comrades Selknam genocide, the island the military was bombing bombing radio stations, fly- alive, but were also anxious was given to Salesian mis- the presidential palace La ing low above the city streets and frightened, especially for sionaries who were to oversee Moneda. As his middle-class to intensify the terror. Radio their families. the “assimilation” of the neighbors cheered the fall of Magallanes broadcast Allen- From September 12, surviving Selknam and their the socialist Popular Unity de’s courageous and devastat- 1973, until October 28, 1974, descendants. Dawson Island government, Bitar and his ing last words, then went off Bitar was a political prisoner again became a site of human wife gathered their children the air. Bitar had long known (renamed Isla 10 by his cap- rights abuses when within to take them to a place of that Allende would die by tors) in Antarctica. The body days of the coup, the Chilean greater safety. his own hand rather than let of his narrative is preceded armed forces commandeered As the family drove away himself be slaughtered by the by a complete list of the the island and ran it as a con- from their home, news re- enemies of democracy. The forty-seven Unidad Popular centration camp for Allende’s ports confirmed that the coup legitimately elected socialist Prisoners held at Dawson inner circle and prominent

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supporters. activity pick up. play further complicated the transcribed every word, ar- In freezing temperatures, The prisoners held classes prisoners’ situation. Specula- chived every page, and kept driving rains and deep mud, and formed study groups. In tion and rumor, conflicting the manuscript safely hidden Bitar and his companions their number were interna- statements, attitudes and away for nine years. In 1984, were subjected to forced tional experts in economics, information intensified the Bitar was allowed to return labor (cutting down trees, political science, history, the prisoners’ anxieties. to Chile, where the book sawing logs, sinking fences), military and a host of other Included in this volume was published in 1987, while insufficient and disgusting academic disciplines. Smaller are a suite of affecting pho- Pinochet was still in power. rations, inadequate sanita- groups studied languages. tographs: Bitar and fellow Printed multiple times in tion, and uniforms and bed- Bitar taught German, and cabinet member Jorge Tapia Chile and translated into at ding grotesquely unsuited to with the skillset of a Har- reporting to the Escuela Mil- least a score of languages, Antarctic conditions. Prison- vard-trained economist, he itar two days after the coup; Prisoner of Pinochet only ers got badly injured; several began a rigorous analysis a censored page of a letter now appears in English. That died. Some got so sick they of Allende’s government from Bitar’s wife, Kenny; is a whole other cultural would be ill for the rest of programs, focusing par- prisoner portraits and camp story, and a disheartening their lives. Torments includ- ticularly on what they could drawings by fellow prisoner one, in view of Bitar’s distin- ed ear-splitting sirens and have done, or explained, Miguel Lawner (Director of guished profile as a scholar light storms in the middle better. (Bitar would go on to the Corporation for Urban and political leader in post- of the night. Interrogations write a number of important Improvement); a photo of Pinochet Chile. sometimes included outright books on Chilean democracy, bundled-up prisoners trudg- But let us take this torture (though not in Bitar’s economy and military.) The ing back to camp after work; publication for the be- case). The group could be group jerry-rigged a radio, Bitar’s lovely stone carvings lated triumph that it is. Erin suddenly moved to other lo- but this too could be a source done to pass the time. One Goodman’s translation hews cations—furious roundups, a of misery, as when the regime of the most moving photo- to the grounded, modest storm of trucks, unexplained triumphantly broadcast the graphs shows Las Dawsoni- tone of Bitar’s Spanish. Peter transport to another bare- deaths of comrades (“enemies anas, as the prisoners’ activ- Winn supplied excellent bones and brutal camp, as he of the state”). ist wives called themselves. notes, and his foreword is vividly recounts. As Bitar makes clear, The picture shows five of at once personal, surpass- Bitar’s narrative, though triumphalism was not uni- these vibrant women sitting ingly lucid and eloquent. As personal, is at its heart com- versally shared among the close together on a living a young man in Santiago, munal. He keeps track of the captors on Dawson Island. room sofa with Allende’s Winn found himself in the men around him, document- The highest-ranking officers widow, Hortensia, front and plaza as the military bombed ing illnesses and injuries, tended to be true believ- center. Two of these women La Moneda. It was a moment moods and modes of coping. ers in the cause to eradicate (Margarita Morel de Letelier that would change his life, Not a page goes by without socialism; the lower ranks and Moy Morales de Toha) and help produce one of the clear descriptions of canny were more mixed—a number would later also lose their finest Latin Americanists of strategies for surviving at the of soldiers and policemen husbands. his generation. bottom of the world. The mu- posted to Dawson Island had International pressure A final word of praise tual generosity of these men been in Allende’s Popular was key to the prisoners’ for Steve Stern and Scott may have been their best Unity party or in other leftist survival, liberation and offers Strauss, who direct the protection against the daily organizations, and had their of asylum. Sergio Bitar left Critical Human Rights series humiliations and cruelties of own apprehensions. Even Chile on November 14, 1973, at the UW Press. Theirs is a their captors. Whenever one some of Pinochet’s most ar- for Washington, D.C., where distiguished list of titles, and of their group gets a letter dent supporters treated Bitar he was awaited by the friends Bitar—aways one to value (though heavily redacted), a and his group as Prisoners of who’d won his freedom and good company—is right at package (always previously War—a misnomer (there was who now urged him to “write home. opened and often pilfered), no war, it was an unopposed down everything you’re tell- a visit, or is released, Bitar military coup), but the so- ing [us].” While teaching at Marguerite Feitlowitz is never fails to say, “Good news called status granted the pris- Harvard in 1975, Bitar spent the author of A Lexicon of for one of us was good news oners certain rights and gave time each day systematically Terror: Argentina and the for all.” And he recounts how the captors a cleansing sense dictating his prison story Legacies of Torture. She the mood in the barracks of mission. That these atti- into a tape recorder. His teaches at Bennington College would then lift, the pace of tudes were simultaneously in wife, Kenny Hirmas de Bitar, in Bennington, Vermont.

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 77 BOOK TALK

Latin Roots and Universal Suffering A REVIEW By DALIA WASSNER

One Long Night: A Global His- demands that her audience American Civil War some of tory of Concentration Camps reckon with the immoral its most devastating aspects, by Andrea Pitzer (New York: and often illegal tactics that and which was instructional Little, Brown and Company, modern regimes have repeat- for the mass deportations and 2017) edly adopted in service of detentions of Nazi Germany. civil wars. These are tactics Pitzer thus demonstrates that In One Long Night: A of inhumanity that steadily as instrumental as bureau- Global History of Concentra- exclude “the other” not only cratic efficiencies such as cen- tion Camps, Andrea Pitzer of- from participation in polity or sus taking and the invention fers a thoughtful combination society, but from a collective of barbed wire and automatic of investigative journalism consciousness. To her study of weapons were to creating the and historical analysis that the emergence and function- infamous camps that would identifies the roots and com- ing of camps, Pitzer then adds mark the 20th century, so too monalities across global itera- the complicated aftermath were the historical precedents tions of concentration camps whereby survivors and perpe- that paved way for each sub- throughout the 20th century. trators again live together in sequent iteration. The book lends poignant tes- societies once defined by the Providing a clear moral timony to what it means for 21st century with a searing violent separation and abuse judgment in the context of private citizens to be corralled condemnation of North of the former by the latter. the first concentration camp time and again into spaces Korean prisons alongside Pitzer’s journalistic fire studied in the work—the where human rights, legal ongoing U.S. use of Guan- is balanced by a grounded case of Cuba in the wake processes and social relations tánamo Bay. Invoking Elie historical inclination, one of its independence from dissolve. Claiming witness to Wiesel’s harrowing testimony that impels her to begin her Spain—Pitzer notes: “His- the multiple—and multiply- of the Holocaust, “Never book by tracing the recon- tory is full of moments in ing—systematized instances shall I forget that night, the centración of indigenous which hindsight provides of removal of human beings first night in the camp, that Americans by Columbus, a the only clear view. This is from their homes, and de- turned my life into one long pattern continued through not one of them” (20). The manding accountability from night seven times sealed,” the Spanish and Portuguese author explores the deliberate the nations that have hosted alongside Primo Levi’s assess- conquests to the south and tactics of cleansing the Cuban the torturous machinations of ment that the Shoah was not the British and French countryside of its inhabitants the ensuing captivities, Pitzer a singular occurrence, “It can conquests to the north. through a policy enunciated diagnoses the past century as happen, and it can happen Subsequently describing the on October 21, 1896, sum- “the lost century.” everywhere,” Andrea Pitzer period of post-independence marily accomplished within Beginning in 1890s, Cuba upholds the moral imperative in the United States, Pitzer only two weeks, and describes and later the U.S. control to remember the Holocaust notes that the Lieber Code the Spanish agenda to ensure of the Philippines after the in its specific manifesta- of Conduct, which gave control of the island as the Spanish-American War, tions while also remaining Civil War generals the right to European country tried des- extending of course to Nazi aware and responsible to the remove all suspected sym- perately to maintain its final Europe and Soviet Russia of concentration camp phenom- pathizers from their homes, foothold in the Americas. The World War II, Communist enon writ large. set an important precedent very pursuit of such terroriz- China of the 1960s and ’70s, Through extensive inter- within U.S. and interna- ing practices influenced U.S. and the Southern Cone of views of historians, activists, tional law courts—including involvement in the war in Latin America during the soldiers and lawyers, as well The Hague in 1899 and the defense of Cuba—an involve- Cold War, the book con- as accounts by survivors and Second Geneva Convention ment as much pursued for cludes finally in our current camp guards alike, Pitzer in 1906—one that lent the U.S. political and economic

78 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 BOOK TALK

coup in 1973 Chile, Pitzer ob- Chile have dialogued with the On the same landscape of his serves that he tried as much ghosts of the Holocaust to as possible to maintain a no- bring truth to the horrors of childhood, Agüero now faced the tion of humanity not defined their own lifetimes, experi- embodiment of “atomized terror:” in terms set by his captors. enced a generation and ocean Thus, instead of stealing a apart. As Pitzer outlines the “Illegal detention, it turned out, glimpse of his torturers when multi-generational and inter- could be tucked away in the every day he had a chance, Agüero opt- national aspects of the camps ed to turn away, “frightened themselves, so too has a cadre world, carried out with few people to see the face of someone of Latin American feminist being the wiser” (354). willing to do these things to figures emerged to emphasize him” (336). Pitzer thus lends the multi-directionality of interest and popularized at the guard to let him through. testimony to the determina- culture in bringing an end home in defense of human Stepping onto the track he tion of the detained to resist to the global proliferation rights. Pitzer then shows how had run as a child, he walked the forces and justifications of camps and their goals of similar concentration camp the straightaway and the of inhumanity enacted on genocide. tactics were imposed by U.S. curve as he circled the soccer them. While describing the Recalling Hannah Arendt’s troops in the Philippines. field. At his assigned spot he historical precedents to these now famous phrase “banal- Thus, the same war that stood waiting for his tortur- camps, as well as the inter- ity of evil,” which emerged in marked the finality of Spain’s ers, taking in the grass, the national coordination that relation to Eichmann’s trial in overseas empire transformed sky, and tens of thousands if at times was instrumental Jerusalem, Pitzer outlines the the United States from a past seats, row after empty row” to their existence, Pitzer ad- repeated instances in which colony to an imperial power (333). On the same landscape ditionally notes that victims people around the world have that adopted the repressive of his childhood, Agüero now of concentration camps too been removed from their policies of its vanquished faced the embodiment of “at- carried in their minds global homes and treated “as if they foe. Pitzer’s global history of omized terror:” “Illegal deten- and historical frameworks no longer existed, as if what concentration camps, from its tion, it turned out, could be for understanding their own happened to them were no inception, thereby demands tucked away in the every day circumstances. In Agüero’s longer of interest to anybody, that the United States con- world, carried out with few words: “the prisoners, looking as if they were already dead front its own checkered past people being the wiser” (354). at the ground and covered and some evil spirit gone as it consolidated a national Through such testimony, the with blankets, appeared mad were amusing himself by identity through “reconcen- reader witnesses the appro- markedly worse than any stopping them for a while be- trations,” civil war and impe- priation of public spaces in prisoners he had seen thus tween life and death” (7). And rial ambitions, all in prepara- service of the dissolution of far. Their shattered aspects yet, Pitzer shows that prison- tion to become a global power democracy: “friends pretend- brought to mind images of ers or detainees of the mul- of the 20th century. ed to be strangers to protect Nazi camp survivors. He tiple camps of the last century While the book traces themselves and each other” wondered where these people have fiercely struggled to many important connections (329). These spaces of terror, had been and what they had maintain their own human- across the globe, I would claims Pitzer, were the “ille- gone through to look like ity even while experiencing like to focus on the section gitimate offspring of Western that” (339). systematized machinations covering Latin American democracies,” since the dicta- In my own research, I have of de-humanization. Pitzer’s concentration camps of the torships of the Southern Cone studied subversive culture work implores of the current military dictatorships of Chile were supported in secret by created by women of the generation: How will the 21st (1973-1990) and Argentina the United States as part and Southern Cone who have century be defined? (1976-1983). In the chapter parcel of the Cold War within urged the importance of post- titled “Bastard Children of the Global South, including in Holocaust collective memory Dalia Wassner, Ph.D. is the Camps,” Pitzer describes the case of Latin America, the in bringing reckoning—if not a Research Associate and how national public spaces Guatemalan and Paraguayan justice—to the humanitarian the Director of the Project such as sports stadiums were coups of 1954, Brazil in the abuses enacted in their own on Latin American Jew- converted into concentra- 1960s and Chile and Argen- lifetimes. Creating subver- ish & Gender Studies at the tion camps: “Agüero headed tina in the 1970s and ‘80s. sive journalism and theater, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute from the gallery to the closest In the example of Felipe producing novels and poetry, of Brandeis University. entrance gate and waited for Agüero, a victim of Pinochet’s women of Argentina and

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 79 LAST LOOK

80 ReVista SPRING/SUMMER 2018 PHOTO ABOVE BY MAXI JONAS, HTTPS://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/MAXIJONASFOTOS/ DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

VISITING SCHOLARS AND FELLOWS PROGRAM

THE CENTER Founded in 1994, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University works to increase knowledge of the cultures, economies, histories, environment, and contemporary affairs of past and present Latin America.

THE PROGRAM Each year the Center selects a number of distinguished academics (Visiting Scholars) and professionals (Fellows) who wish to spend one or two semesters at Harvard working on their own research and writing projects. The Center offers nine fellowships that pro- vide support for one semester. Applications from those with their own resources are also welcome.

Visiting Scholars and Fellows are provided shared office space, computers, library privileges, access to University facilities and events, and opportunities to audit classes and attend seminars. The residential fellowships cover round-trip travel expenses, health insurance, and a taxable $25,000 living stipend while at Harvard. Appointments are typically for one or two semesters. Recipients are expected to be in residence at the University a minimum of twelve weeks during the semester. APPLICATIONS DUE FEBRUARY 1ST

THE APPLICATION DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN Applications should be submitted electronically to [email protected] AMERICAN STUDIES or via the online application form. For the form and further details please visit http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/scholars . 1730 Cambridge Street CGIS, South Building David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: 617-496-1588 HARVARD UNIVERSITY [email protected] NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE PAID BOSTON, MA PERMIT NO. 1636 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138

CONTRIBUTORS

65 Pablo Allard is the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin Vassar College. 72 Manuel Perló Cohen, an economist, is a tenured researcher American Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. 68 Krister at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales at UNAM in Mexico City. 53 Andersson is a professor of Political Science at University of Colorado at Franklin Plasencia Amaya is a consultant to the Investigación Nutricional in Boulder. 42 Jai Chowdhry Beeman is a Ph.D. candidate at the Université Lima. 58 Nicoló Filippo Rosso is an Italian photographer based in Colombia. Grenoble Alpes and a former ReVista intern. 13 Emily Blair is a 2017 graduate 42 Jean C. Ruiz Hernandez is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the of the Masters of Landscape Architecture program at the Harvard Graduate Transportation Management career of the Chimborazo Polytechnic School in School of Design. 48 Ari Caramanica is a Ph.D. candidate in the Harvard Riobamba-Ecuador. 18 Ramón Sánchez is director of the Sustainable Anthropology Department. 53 Miluska Carrasco is at the Investigación Technologies and Health Program in the Center for Health and the Global Nutricional in Lima. 72 Loreta Castro Reguera Mancera, a Mexico City-based Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). 2 architect and urban designer, teaches at the UNAM School of Architecture. Daniel Schrag is the director of the Harvard Center for the Environment. 18 13 Jenna Chaplin is a 2017 graduate of the Masters of Landscape Architecture John Spengler is the Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. 53 Hilary Creed- Human Habitation at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 53 Milka Kanashiro is at the Investigación Nutricional in Lima. 53 Gisela Cruz García Tello is a faculty member in agricultural sciences at the Universidad Nacional is with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). 8 Charles Hermilio Valdizan de Huánuco (UNHEVAL). 53 Ramzi Tubbeh is a Peruvian C. Davis is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard Ph.D. student at Pennsylvania State University. 38 Patricia Valderrama University and Director of the Harvard University Herbaria. 53 Stef de Haan is is a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University. 68 with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). 51 Gustavo Diaz Patricio Valdivieso is Professor of Political Science of the Center for Regional Paz is a Master in Urban Design candidate at the Harvard Graduate School Development Studies and Public Policy at Universidad de los Lagos, Chile. of Design. 14 Elizabeth Donger is a Research Associate at the Harvard FXB 30 John Waldron is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Center for Health and Human Rights. 18 Erika Eitland is a doctoral candidate Vermont. 78 Dalia Wassner is the Director of the Project on Latin American in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Jewish & Gender Studies at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute of Brandeis Public Health. 8 Aaron M. Ellison is the Senior Research Fellow in Ecology University. 26 Maria Alessandra Woolson teaches at the University of at Harvard University. 76 Marguerite Feitlowitz is the author of A Lexicon Vermont for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Honors College. 18 Jie of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. 33 Gisela Heffes is a fiction Yin is a doctoral student at the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard writer and an Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 53 Karl Zimmerer, the 2016 DRCLAS Rice University. 22 Veronica Herrera is Assistant Professor of Political Science Custer Visiting Scholar, is a professor in the department of geography and at the University of Connecticut and DRCLAS Visiting Scholar. 53 Andrew the department of agricultural economics, sociology, and education at Jones is with the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. Pennsylvania State University. 53 Krysty Mesa is at the Investigación Nutricional in Lima. 45 Lisa Paravisini- FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHERS: Eladio Fernandez, Maxi Jonas, Robin Moore Gebert, the 2016-17 Wilbur Marvin Visiting Scholar at DRCLAS, teaches at and Nicoló Filipo Rosso