summer 2013 | volume xliv | issue 3 in this issue
On the Profession The Impact of Fellowships on Individuals, Their Institutions, and Their Communities Two to Tango: Franco-Latino and Franco-Maghrebi Queer Transnationalism by Luis Navarro-Ayala Transitando del yo al nosotros, y del nosotros a los otros por Cecilia Barja Chamas An Embarrassment of Riches: Reflections on Visiting Fellowships by Raphael B. Folsom
Debates Argentina, los juicios y los derechos humanos por Gratzia Villarroel y Roberto Gargarella Judging Memory by Sam Ferguson Courtrooms and Legacies of Violence by Ram Natarajan La Argentina: Un laboratorio extraordinario por Sévane Garibian Addressing the Past, Avoiding the Present, Ignoring the Future? Ongoing Human Rights Trials in Argentina by Par Engstrom President Merilee Grindle Harvard University [email protected]
Vice President Debra Castillo Table of Contents Cornell University Past President Evelyne Huber University of North Carolina
1 From the President: On to Chicago | by Merilee Grindle Treasurer 2 From the Outgoing President | by Evelyne Huber Timothy J. Power University of Oxford 2013 Silvert Panel EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
3 On the Origins of Inspiration | by Peter H. Smith For term ending May 2014: Graciela Montaldo, Columbia University 2013 lasa/oxfam america martin diskin lecture Maria Clemencia Ramirez, Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia 6 Introduction of Recipient, Stefano Varese | by Charles R. Hale Catalina Romero, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
8 Eulogy of Utopian Praxis: From Dystopian Reality to the Research of Hope For term ending May 2015: by Stefano Varese Claudio A. Fuentes, Universidad Diego Portales Katherine Hite, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie ON THE PROFESSION Mary Louise Pratt, New York University 14 Two to Tango: Franco-Latino and Franco-Maghrebi Queer Ex Officio Transnationalism | by Luis Navarro-Ayala Florencia Garramuño, Universidad de San Andrés Raúl Madrid, University of Texas/Austin 17 Transitando del yo al nosotros, y del nosotros a los otros Philip Oxhorn, McGill University por Cecilia Barja Chamas Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh 18 An Embarrassment of Riches: Reflections on Visiting Fellowships FORUM EDITORIAL COMMITTEE by Raphael B. Folsom Editor DEBATES Merilee Grindle, Harvard University
20 Argentina, los juicios y los derechos humanos Managing Editor Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh por Gratzia Villarroel y Roberto Gargarella 21 Judging Memory | by Sam Ferguson Guest Associate Editors 24 Courtrooms and Legacies of Violence | by Ram Natarajan Roberto Gargarella, CONICET� Gratzia Villarroel, St. Norbert College 26 La Argentina: Un laboratorio extra-ordinario | por Sévane Garibian 29 Addressing the Past, Avoiding the Present, Ignoring the Future? Ongoing Human LASA Staff Rights Trials in Argentina | by Par Engstrom Special Projects Coordinator María Soledad Cabezas, University of Pittsburgh ON LASA2014 Assistant Director for Institutional Advancement 32 Chicago! Chicago! Looking Ahead to LASA2014 Sandra Klinzing, University of Pittsburgh by Raúl Madrid and Florencia Garramuño Communications Specialist 33 Call for Papers Sara Lickey, University of Pittsburgh 35 Reservation Form for the LASA2014 Book Exhibit Executive Director 36 Film Festival Form Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh Membership Coordinator CALLING ALL MEMBERS Israel R. Perlov, University of Pittsburgh
37 Nominations Invited Operations Manager – Congress Coordinator Pilar Rodriguez Blanco, University of Pittsburgh 40 Proposed Changes to the LASA Bylaws
LASA’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY The LASA Forum is published four times a year. It is the official vehicle for conveying news about the Latin American Studies Association to its 43 Silvert Reminiscences Project members. Articles appearing in the On the Profession and Debates sections of the Forum are commissioned by the Editorial Committee and deal with selected themes. The Committee welcomes responses to any material ON LASA2013 published in the Forum.
53 Final Report on the 31st International Congress in Washington, DC Opinions expressed herein are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Latin American Studies Association by Gwen Kirkpatrick and Kenneth M. Roberts or its officers. 54 LASA Business Meeting ISSN 0890-7218 56 LASA2013 Awards and Recipients 62 LASA2013 Photos
lasa sections
64 Section News From the President by Merilee Grindle | Harvard University | [email protected]
On to Chicago Our next LASA Congress will meet in Chicago, that great windy city on a very As I looked around the busy hotel lobby large lake. Our program chairs, Raúl and corridors of the LASA Congress in Madrid and Florencia Garramuño, are Washington, DC, I couldn’t help but be already thinking of ways to advance our reminded of the generations of scholars tradition of diverse, intellectually drawn to the study of the history, culture, stimulating, and professionally engaging economics, politics, and environment of events, and the LASA Secretariat is already Latin America, and the multiple journeys busy making certain that the logistics are as that bring us together at our (now) annual flawless as possible. The historic Palmer There is much to reflect on as we anticipate gathering. At the end of May, students, House is once again anticipating our arrival and plan for the Chicago meeting. LASA newly minted professors, rising generations, and no doubt bracing for the clamor of our provides a wealth of benefits to its midcareer professionals, and my dear old reunions and debates. We anticipate that members—intellectual encouragement, friends collected, conferred, and caught up the next LASA Congress will be a certainly, but also the important with each other for three busy days. Over stimulating and important experience for professional networks and collaborations a long career, I have seen how LASA our membership. that are critical in our careers and in our meetings provide a space for reunions of scholarship. Its secretariat is invariably friends and colleagues, a summit for The theme for the Congress is “Democracy responsive and well managed, and the debates about recent trends in scholarship, and Memory,” chosen to encourage extent of the assistance it offers to its a treasure trove of panels and workshops reflection from diverse perspectives on members for attendance at its Congresses is for advancing important themes of legacies of collective experiences of central to its mission. How, then, can we research, and a springboard for students repression, injustice, and resistance, and the help LASA maintain its important role in and young scholars to develop rewarding construction of vibrant political, social, and our scholarly lives? Let me suggest some careers. LASA Congresses are, in the cultural institutions in their wake. This opportunities for keeping LASA vibrant, deepest sense, a gathering in of a fellowship theme has few disciplinary boundaries. Of international, and multidisciplinary: of those committed to greater course political scientists, historians, and understanding of an important region of sociologists focus on how collective • Renew your LASA membership regularly. the world, and a place for expanding our memories of authoritarian experiences relationships with those who share influence the present and future of Latin • Become a Life Member of LASA. scholarly interests. America, but the theme is also one that • Support LASA’s travel funds and student journalists as well as anthropologists and fund. The Latin American Studies Association, archeologists excavate; architects, city founded in 1966, is the largest organization planners, and curators capture and • Encourage your university or of scholars and professionals who wish to interpret collective memories in public organization to become an Institutional explore the past, present, and future of the spaces and museums; humanists produce Member and study novels, poetry, essays, and region. In 2012, the Association had more • Contribute to the LASA Endowment. than 7,600 individual members, 48 percent theatrical productions about the theme; of whom resided outside the United States, artists, dancers, and musicians interpret • Establish a bequest for LASA. and 381 institutional members. It is an such experiences; religious studies guide us • Serve on one of LASA’s many member organization deeply committed to being in thinking about trauma and healing; committees. international and multidisciplinary. In my psychologists and brain scientists study professional lifetime, I have seen LASA how memory is conserved and understood; • Contribute your ideas and comments for transformed. The language of choice ecologists and geographers find threads in improving our activities. became Spanish rather than English, and how our environments are shaped. The politics, history, anthropology, and theme of memory and its influence on the In addition to these means of keeping sociology have been enriched and extended construction of political, social, and LASA dynamic, you can also begin through widening interest in literature, art, cultural institutions will be particularly planning panels and papers for our film, journalism, environmental sciences, important in encouraging us to transcend Chicago meeting, May 21–24, 2014. and other disciplines. I have seen the our disciplinary boundaries and to engage I look forward to seeing you there! Association become a welcoming home for in serious discussion of the influence of the new generations of teachers, researchers, past on our present and future. and explorers in diverse fields and professions.
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From the Outgoing President by Evelyne Huber | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | [email protected]
LASA2013 in Washington is behind us, and planned several special panels and invited as always we are thinking ahead to the next the participants. Gwen Kirkpatrick International Congress, to be held in a deserves particular credit for her successful year’s time in Chicago. The Washington efforts to engage Georgetown University to Congress was a lively event, with some host and co-sponsor the opening ceremony 3,500 participants and three packed days and reception. I also want to thank Essentially, the Association is what of interesting panels. The opening Cynthia Arnson, Director of the Latin committed members make of it. And they ceremony with the award presentations American Program at the Woodrow Wilson have made it strong through their dedicated was hosted by Georgetown University in a International Center for Scholars, for service. beautiful space and was well attended. We co-organizing the panel on U.S.–Latin were honored to have Secretary General American Relations and inviting the former The Fund-Raising Committee made Insulza of the Organization of American president of Uruguay, Tabaré Vázquez, to particular strides this year in ensuring a States offer opening remarks with his vision that panel. LASA Executive Director sound financial future for the Association. of a region with sovereign states and Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, Sandy Klinzing, The former chair, Marysa Navarro, and the democratic governments working together Pilar Rodríguez, and other LASA staff present co-chairs, Cynthia McClintock and to improve the lives of their people. His members worked tirelessly to ensure that Kevin Middlebrook, successfully pursued remarks provided an excellent lead-in to the Congress would run smoothly in all an initiative initially proposed by the many panels that considered in one respects, and so it did. They all deserve a committee members Carmen Diana Deere way or another whether some kind of new big thank you! and Lars Schoultz, to solicit bequests for social contract is emerging in the region. the LASA endowment. The results One aspect of the Congress that was less surpassed expectations, with 22 pledges This was the first Congress on the new than satisfactory was the situation with received. LASA members who pledged a annual schedule. One of the main goals of visas for Cuban scholars. Despite our bequest became the inaugural members of the change to this schedule was achieved: proactive letter to Secretary of State John the Kalman Silvert Society and were The number of proposals became more Kerry well before the Congress, in which honored at a reception. The Fund-Raising manageable within the given time and we urged him to ensure that visas to invited Committee has made the bequest campaign space constraints, and accordingly the participants from Cuba be granted in the a priority in the run-up to LASA’s 50th rejection rate of proposals was negligible. interest of a free scholarly exchange, a Anniversary in 2016. The LASA All full panel proposals were accepted, and dozen invited Cuban participants had their endowment is used for travel support and only some 3 percent of individual paper visas denied; some 70 visas were granted. for special projects. Thus, these bequests proposals were rejected. So, compared to a Our letter was signed by all former LASA will improve LASA’s future capacity to rejection rate of over 30 percent in San presidents who could be reached and was respond positively to requests for travel Francisco, we have achieved a situation also sent to a few targeted members of the subsidies to the Congresses and to support conducive to highly inclusive participation. U.S. Congress. It was followed by new collaborative scholarly initiatives. There are some drawbacks as well; some supportive letters from other scholarly scholars who have attended just about professional associations. This is clearly an The best aspect of being part of the LASA every Congress were not able to come to issue that requires our continued attention leadership is that you get to know and this one for reasons of time or financial and a repeat of proactive measures before work with wonderful colleagues. This is constraints. They were particularly missed the next Congress. true for members of the Executive Council in the Sections in which they have been and particularly for my predecessor and active. This Congress signaled the end of my successor as president. Maria Hermínia year-long presidency. It was an honor and Tavares de Almeida, past president, and An enormous amount of work goes into a pleasure to serve in this capacity. LASA is Merilee Grindle, incoming president, planning and organizing a LASA Congress. a strong organization with lots of dedicated combine the qualities of outstanding The program co-chairs, Gwen Kirkpatrick members who serve in many roles, from scholars with those of skilled leaders and and Ken Roberts, began to work with track track chairs to Section chairs and members committed team members. I want to thank chairs over a year ago. Together, we of award and other committees. them both for their support and their contributions to LASA.
2 2013 silvert panel
On the Origins of Inspiration by Peter H. Smith | Kalman Silvert Awardee for 2013
Washington, DC, May 31, 2013
Good morning! My thanks to you, Maria In subsequent work on Argentina, I Hermínia, to members of the selection proposed to examine roll-call voting committee . . . and to whatever they were patterns in the national Chamber of smokin’ at the time. Abrazos to the Deputies during the first half of the panelists for thoughtful and gracious twentieth century. This would have the presentations. And greetings to all of you. inestimable advantage of allowing me to I very much appreciate your being here. display newly acquired statistical skills. I would see what he could do. Repeated explained the plan to one learned colleague, visits to his office came up empty. On my I am honored, humbled, and profoundly who replied that he had already perused last night in Buenos Aires, the front desk grateful. I feel like a little kid who’s just the legislative records of all those years and at the hotel called my room to announce snuck into a roomful of serious thinkers, found that they contained no more than a the arrival of a package in my name. brilliant minds, and inspiring teachers, dozen votes by name, known as votaciones There, in a plain brown wrapping, were among them Kalman Silvert himself. On nominales. Undeterred by this the official election results. No one my very first job, at Dartmouth College, discouragement, I plunged ahead with my would ever have to know. still in my twenties, I became Kal’s junior- dubious enterprise and came up with more junior-junior colleague. He was a than 1,700 name-by-name votes. Being • My research interests later turned to formidable senior member of our stubborn is a virtue in our profession. Mexico, where I had the great good profession, forceful and decisive. He was fortune to meet with Mario Ojeda at El also generous to a fault. He read my Book reviews have been mostly merciful Colegio de México. After a while he doctoral dissertation word for word and over the years. One glaring exception was referred me directly to don Víctor Urquidi offered sage advice. He permitted me to a withering denunciation of my book (a Silvert awardee), who met me that audit his college class and observe his Talons of the Eagle in the Wall Street same day and offered me an appointment lecture style. He urged me to gain Journal. In dismay I called my older as a visiting researcher. That opened up command of quantitative methodology. At brother, a journalist at the Washington the world for me in that fascinating some conference or other it was my turn to Post, and described this unseemly country. speak while Kal was in the audience. An development. “Congratulations,” he incredulous student came up to me later to replied, “you wouldn’t have wanted a • A central element of my research project say, “Did you see that? He was taking positive review from them, now would on Mexico required biographical notes on you!” My stock soared you?” You can define yourself by the information on a large number of throughout the Dartmouth community. enemies you make. political officeholders. Eventually I went to the national congress and requested It wasn’t always as easy as that. As a rite So there have been bumps along the road. access to semiofficial profiles on then of passage, my dissertation adviser, Lewis I have also encountered innumerable and current legislators. The custodian politely Hanke, urged me to circulate my thesis random acts of kindness and senseless explained that no such records existed. proposal on the political economy of generosity, especially as I was starting out Days later I happened to have coffee with Argentina among leading scholars in the on my career: his superior, who not only said I could field. I did so with apprehension, politely have the data but volunteered to asking a select group of luminaries if they • José Molina, an up-and-coming accompany me over to the archives. thought my topic was “manageable and agronomist at the University of Buenos Neither the custodian nor I blinked. worthwhile.” My first reply came by return Aires, went out of his way to critique key Saving face can be an important part of mail, with one word scrawled in the chapters of my dissertation-in-progress the bargain. right-hand margin alongside my query: and invite me to join expeditions with his No. This left me with a stark choice: either students to nearby estancias. • Soledad Loaeza, a prominent scholar and pitch myself off the nearest rooftop, or grit colleague, shared with me on many my teeth and muddle through. As you can • At a later point I was seeking district-by- occasions her unique and firsthand gather from my presence here, I chose the district results for the Argentina elections knowledge of politics and personalities in latter course. of 1973; a sympathetic bureaucrat said he Mexico. These insights greatly enriched
3 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3
my understanding of the one-party But there is more to it than that. As we we align ourselves with underdogs, with regime. She not only supported my learn about the region, we have been people who suffer within Latin America, efforts; she also oversaw the translation profoundly moved by things we have and with Latin American nations that have of my resulting book into Spanish for witnessed or observed. My personal sometimes suffered at the hands of the publication by El Colegio de México. experiences include riveting scenes: United States.
So it has been. None of these people had • the resolute dignity of poverty-stricken We ask ourselves what we can do. Our to do the things they did for me. I have indigenous women kneeling on the answer is: Seek truth. (We know, of course, received invaluable help, guidance, and sidewalks of Mexico City, eyes downcast that there is no such thing as absolute intellectual sustenance at every stage of my and hands outstretched, pleading for truth, that it is a relative notion, but we not-quite-finished career. I could never gestures of human charity; want to get as close as possible. This is a have succeeded without them, or, for that noble quest, even if results are fallible.) matter, without all of you. • the passionate fury of a fashionably dressed young woman in Buenos Aires Truth brings enlightenment. It provides Now I am going to take a bit of poetic who, during a student protest against the perspective and enlarges our awareness. It license. I want to address my family: my 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican takes away our blinders and it sets us free. sons, daughters, and daughters-in-law, all Republic, climbed aboard a police jeep of whom are present. It is a special and used her handbag to club an armed Truth enhances understanding. Many of us occasion to have them together in one place policeman; tell stories that have never been told. We and listening to me. I intend to seize this try to explore the lives and struggles of the opportunity. In so doing I will purport to • the unrelenting courage of countless weak and disadvantaged, to emphasize speak on behalf of colleagues here colleagues who confronted military and their dignity and sense of purpose. This assembled, in hopes that you will forgive other authoritarian regimes by continuing underlines realities of our common destiny. my intentional slippages between singular to do their work, and risked life and limb and plural first-person pronouns. in the process; Truth offers a path toward empowerment. In many times and places, the rich and Now then . . . children. You must wonder • the fate of a Jesuit priest from El Salvador powerful have invented stories explaining what I do. You see me working away at who gave a stunning lecture to one of my why they (and not others) should be rich the computer, producing arcane documents, university classes and was thereafter and powerful. Occasionally these stories getting on airplanes, heading off to murdered in his homeland by a gang of contain grains of partial truth; often they mysterious places, coming back home, and military thugs; consist of gross exaggerations; and all too going back to the computer. You know I frequently they are based on blatant lies. teach university students and I suspect you • the callous destruction in 1989 of lives On the whole, our work provides a sometimes commiserate with them. and property in Panama (aka “collateral corrective to these tales. Scribble, scribble, scribble, talk, talk, damage”) by U.S. military forces in talk—what does the old man really do? pursuit of just one individual, Manuel Truth unravels fabrication; it undermines Antonio Noriega; mendacity. We thus unmask the Let me explain. My colleagues and I are instruments of domination and control. fascinated by the tenor and tones of life in • the superhuman bravery of a grieving We speak truth to power, or at least we Latin America. It is a land of paradox, and grandmother of the Plaza de Mayo, who make it possible for others to speak truth it stimulates our curiosity. Once we expressed relief to learn that her adult to power. identify a puzzle, we become determined to daughter was dead and could no longer solve it. Once we locate a trail of evidence, be subjected to torture. We try not only to discover truth. We also we are enthralled by the thrill of the chase. want to spread the word. That is why we We are a band of hunters. These are matters of the heart, not the write, write some more, give papers, attend head. My colleagues and I cannot but conferences, offer lectures, teach students, empathize. In a world of unequal power, teach some more, and talk and talk and
4 talk. Some of us are pretty shy, but as a wait! It was listed as “missing from shelf.” group we form a community of I was crestfallen. Then I came upon a conversationalists. thoroughly satisfactory explanation: some enchanted reader had stolen my book! For North Americans like me, it is That’s right. Stolen my book! My chest especially imperative to have our studies was bursting with pride as I skipped back published in Spanish or Portuguese out to the campus. And as fanciful as this translation, so they will be available to reconstruction of events might seem in people who can put our findings to retrospect, it remains the preferred practical use. interpretation.
Our work resembles that of journalists, I have loved this work. I am profoundly especially print journalists, many of whom grateful for my abundant opportunities and I greatly admire (like my older brother). for this glorious award. I owe special But there are significant differences. First, thanks to my children—for tolerating my we scholars are profoundly concerned with absences (and absentmindedness), for questions of theory and method, with the embracing my ideals, for traveling with me importance of explaining how we carry out to distant lands, and for being here on this our research and analysis. We hold occasion. All this makes me a very lucky ourselves, and each other, to very high guy. Quoting Maya Angelou once more, standards. Second, we don’t usually have “Wouldn’t take nothing for my journey fixed time deadlines. We work on projects now.” Thank you very much. until they are done. Articles take months and years. Books take years and decades. Scholarship requires discipline and patience, qualities aptly captured in the German term sitzfleisch—which, in literal translation, means “the ability to sit still for extended periods of time.”
We have yet another motivation. While we often deal with difficult and painful issues, the work itself is usually enjoyable. Much of it is just plain fun. I have been able to travel to many parts of the world, meet thousands of fascinating people, serve as president of LASA, see my name in print, and watch myself on television. My swelling ego has been gratified in unexpected ways.
One such instance occurred many years ago, right after the publication of my dissertation as a book. While visiting a major university I went to the library to see if my opus was there. I scanned the card catalogue eagerly. Yes! It was there! But
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2013 lasa/oxfam america martin diskin lecture
Introduction of Recipient, Stefano Varese by Charles R. Hale | University of Texas | [email protected]
Washington, DC, June 1, 2013
On rare occasions the opportunity arises to His steely critique was a bit of a place in his native Peru, where Stefano took introduce someone in a professional setting conversation stopper, and everyone did his doctorate from the Pontificia who is in equal parts inspirational seem slightly taken aback; but I am sure the Universidad Católica del Perú; taught at the colleague and dear friend. This makes the quiet also expressed deep admiration. renowned San Marcos University, where he task a special honor, but also a formidable served briefly as chair of the department of challenge. The prestigious Diskin In the good tradition of Mariátegui, anthropology; and soon thereafter began Lectureship is certainly not about Stefano is a committed historical work as director of the División de objectivity with a capital O but is meant to materialist. A rigorous political economy Comunidades Nativas de la Selva, in the celebrate our fullest capacities of critical lens shapes his view of the world and government of Juan Velasco Alvarado, to reflection. Some might argue that these frames his scholarly analysis. Here, that conceive and implement a program of capacities lose their edge under the same balance comes into play in a slightly recognition of indigenous rights to territory influence of memories spanning some 25 different way. It is no secret that in the selva. His principal credential for years of companionship, entwined families, indigenous and native peoples of the this job was his dissertation on the weekend adventures, and pauses for serious Americas have suffered considerably from Ashaninka scholarship that yielded an analysis followed by a burst of irreverence, various political projects of Marxist early, prescient break with the dominant another copa, and laughter—always lots of inspiration and generally harbor almost as tradition of community studies—which laughter. This introduction will advance much distrust for their Marxist “allies” as depicted indigenous peoples as frozen in the counterargument and leave it to you to their adversaries on the right. For nearly a their own premodern space-time—and decide. half century, Stefano has navigated this instead analyzed Ashaninka engagements contradiction with a creative sensitivity with broader political economic forces. It is especially fitting that Stefano Varese that makes his approach to indigenous This work, later published as La sal de los has received this award, because he is cultural politics unique, challenging, and cerros, became a classic, translated into among a dwindling but hardy crew who always provocative. From early on, he English and reprinted numerous times. knew Martin Diskin personally and advanced sharp criticism of the racism and worked closely with him. I have the strong developmentalism that Marxists so often The second movement took place in sense that they were kindred spirits. have taken on as baggage, and he forged Oaxaca, Mexico, where Stefano and his Although the lectureship was founded to deep ties of commonality and shared vision wife Linda lived for a decade and where he recognize extraordinary lifelong with indigenous communities throughout headed the Ministry of Education entity for commitments to activist scholarship, the Americas. Throughout, he also indigenous development, called Culturas Martin had an even more bedrock quality, maintained a sophisticated longue durée Populares, under the national leadership of of which Stefano is also a master Marxist analysis of capitalism, and in so the visionary Mexican anthropologist connoisseur: the sage ability to maintain doing brought together ideas and people Guillermo Bonfil Batalla. Here Stefano both an intense reverence for the weight of that in most settings would remain founded and advanced a wide range of history and an abundant appreciation for separate. Theoretical virtuosity? Certainly. projects, from bilingual-bicultural the dance of life. Stefano’s generosity, But perhaps more fundamentally, this education, to artisan production, to novel kindness, and mild-mannered ways are balance is best understood as a theoretical forms of political organization, subverting legendary—so much so that at times the expression of how he has chosen to lead his the state-centered ideology of indigenismo other side of his character can take you by life. and replacing it with an approach that surprise. I have a vivid memory, from early came to be known as “ethno-development,” in our time together at UC Davis, when a What an extraordinary record of scholarly which emphasized cultural integrity and visiting Peruvian intellectual gave a acompañamiento, of “witness to political autonomy. In Oaxaca he presentation framed by racially tinged sovereignty” (to borrow the title of continued the established pattern of premises of criollo arrogance; Stefano took Stefano’s most recent book) these four carrying forward an intensely productive him on with eloquent vehemence, decades have produced. It is a symphony research program on indigenous Oaxaca, delivering a powerful précis on the weight in three movements, an obra de teatro which ran parallel to the ethno- of Peruvian history which, he suggested, his campesino in three acts, with a special coda development projects that he led. esteemed colleague would do well to learn. yet to come. The first movement took
6 In the mid-1980s the third movement since I met him in the early 1980s that did But this last part is just my speculation. began when the family moved to not generate spontaneous energy and Soon we’ll have the full story from Stefano California. Stefano eventually joined the excitement for some project or another. himself. Rumor has it that the coda, still in faculty at UC Davis and played a formative Second, Stefano, though in many ways the the works, is a memoir, in which Stefano role in building the premier department of consummate scholar, has always made will provide his own reflections on an Native American studies in the country, practical political engagement an integral extraordinary life and an inspiring life’s which defends a truly hemispheric component of his scholarship. (This work. Let this public announcement be a approach to the field. Here Stefano’s commitment is what first brought us further inducement: we are waiting to read research program expanded yet again, fully together: in my rabble-rousing graduate these reflections! And in the meantime, taking on the diasporic dimensions of student days at Stanford, Stefano had just perhaps we’ll hear an early installment, as indigenous cultural politics, accompanying moved from Mexico to the Bay Area, and we congratulate the 14th recipient of the the binational Zapotec organization Frente we had read his work. “This was the kind LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional (FIOB) of anthropology we wanted to learn! We Memorial Lectureship, and welcome from its founding days with a documentary want him here, carajo!”) From 1971, when Stefano Varese to the podium. film as well as a prodigious record of he formed part of the visionary group of scholarship on transnational indigenous intellectuals who signed the first identity, demography, and most recently, Declaration of Barbados, to his later epistemology. The Native American participation in the historic Fourth Russell Studies department at Davis also took full Tribunal on the Human Rights of the advantage of his well-honed skills as Indians of the Americas, to the political organizer and diplomat: he served anthropology-inspired initiatives of as chair for many years and invested heart Culturas Populares, to his association with and soul in the vision of a program of transnational indigenous organizing in Native American/indigenous studies that “Oaxacalifornia,” to his bureaucratic would stay true to its revolutionary roots trench warfare at Davis undertaken with while transcending the deeply entrenched skill and acuity that would have earned an North-South boundaries. approving nod from the Maestro Gramsci—in each space and phase, his All three movements were cumulative in work as a scholar has reached its fullest topic and scholarly focus. Stefano stayed expression when immersed in, and fully engaged in Oaxaca scholarship while mutually informed by, social and political living in California, and in recent years he action. That is the essence of the has been drawn back to Peru to revisit lectureship for which we are honoring him work with his Ashaninka compañeros of this afternoon. A final element is Stefano’s some 40 years past. Three features of deep generosity of spirit and contagious remarkable continuity mark these enthusiasm for the dance of life. This may engagements over a half century. First, a well be the key to everything else: it striking number of these scholarly projects provides a daily reminder of the utopian over the years have been collective ideals of social change to which he has (including the LASA-sponsored study he devoted his career; and it is most certainly carried out with Martin on Miskitu- collective, depending on the full Sandinista relations in Nicaragua), and for participation of others, especially Linda, his anyone who knows Stefano it is simple to lifelong dance partner, who always keeps understand why: they are conceived with a him focused on what really matters most. social purpose that attracts others, and his charisma seals the attraction. I can hardly think of a conversation shared with Stefano
7 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3
2013 lasa/oxfam america martin diskin lecture
Eulogy of Utopian Praxis: From Dystopian Reality to the Research of Hope by Stefano Varese | University of California, Davis | [email protected]�
I am grateful and extremely honored to Later, I published the short homage in to feel what one Spanish philosopher have been named recipient of the LASA/ Spanish as an article in Desacatos, the (Unamuno or Ortega y Gasset?) called Oxfam America 2013 Martin Diskin scholarly journal of CIESAS-Istmo of “generational solitude”—that mystical Memorial Lectureship. I am very pleased Oaxaca (the Centro de Investigaciones y sentiment that makes it difficult for me to by this honor because of my long-standing Estudios Superiores en Antropología remove from my address book names and and loyal membership and participation in Social).1 What I intended to do in that addresses (even e-mail addresses) of friends LASA, one of the best professional homage, besides retracing the parallel and colleagues that have crossed the river associations of social studies and the anthropological paths of Diskin and Bonfil, and left us behind to wonder about the humanities in the hemisphere. I thank the was to ask why in the past one hundred mysteries of cosmic justice. I find a members of the Selection Committee: Chair years of anthropology in the Americas, profound sense of justice in the progressive Aldo Panfichi Huamán, of the Pontificia especially in the United States, we have loss of vital energy that establishes the Universidad Católica del Perú (my alma seen so few examples of sociopolitically natural chronology of biological decay of mater); Peter H. Smith, of the University of committed activist anthropologists such as each one of us in the company of all our California, San Diego; Richard O. Snyder, Martin Diskin and Guillermo Bonfil. Why relatives: the animals, birds, fish, insects, of Brown University; and Gabrielle Watson, was it so hard to find names and life amoebas, and all other entities tangible and of Oxfam America. I also thank Milagros histories of scholars and intellectuals that intangible that constitute our precious Pereyra, Executive Director of LASA, and would resonate among the poor, the cosmology. What I find more difficult to the friends and audience gathered here. underprivileged, the commoners, the grasp and accept is the arbitrary and Special abrazos cariñosos to Vilunya, Leah, peasants, and the indigenous people as capricious early death—by car accident and and Aaron Diskin, in celebration of those much as the lives of Diskin and Bonfil did? by chronic disease—of two intellectual years spent in San Felipe del Agua, Oaxaca, I realize that in our age of impersonal activists whose longer lives and political playing and dreaming in Spanish and globalization, anonymous transit through and social activities would have bettered English. existence as one more commodity or as a the world for all of us. mercantile electronic persona living the In the fall of 1998 at the 21st LASA illusion of world fame through a computer Martin Diskin and Guillermo Bonfil Batalla meeting held in Chicago I delivered a brief monitor, it is becoming increasingly difficult belong to the same generation as Mexican tribute to two friends and colleagues who to extricate real people from the cyber net and Latin American anthropologist- had left an irreplaceable emptiness in the of the anonymous and famous activists Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Salomón Latin American anthropology community, impersonators. Books, articles, written Nahmad, Nemesio Rodríguez Mitchell, and in the community of hope, and in the documents, declarations, poems, and myself, and engaged North American social personal life of innumerable indigenous especially popular oral storytelling are still anthropologist Michael Kearney. We were people, peasants, the poor, and—why the sources through which we must all born between 1930 and 1940 in Latin not—scholars. Martin Diskin and reconstruct the life histories and intellectual America, Europe, or the United States. We Guillermo Bonfil Batalla knew each other journeys of stubborn thinkers and obstinate grew up in the highly contested post-WWII well since the 1970s, when Oaxaca had activists like Diskin and Bonfil. These Pax Americana, we were all subjected to become the home of Martin Diskin and his names and their memories are living in the anticommunist brainwashing and its family—his wife Vilunya and children Leah Miskito and Creole communities of miseducational process, and we all had to and Aaron—and when Mexican Nicaragua and in the Zapotec, Mixtec, sort out in our early reading between the anthropology was being swept by the Maya, Pur’epecha and dozens of other bourgeois interpretation of the world and innovative initiatives of Guillermo Bonfil, indigenous and mestizo pueblos of Mexico, the socialist (Marxist) rewriting of history. who, as director of the INAH, the Instituto Central America, and the United States as We had to build our cosmology in the Nacional de Antropología e Historia, was proof of Antonio Gramsci’s assertion that contested, bipolar, and contradictory decentralizing the institution, sending teams popular memory is true and therefore domains of the utopian hopefulness of of social scientists to the México profundo always revolutionary. socialism and the dystopian resignation of that lay hidden under the official mirage of liberal capitalism. We were strongly modernization and the expansion of the Having aged in synchrony with Diskin and influenced by the previous generation of corporate market economy. Bonfil, at their premature deaths I started thinkers born in the decade 1920–1930:
8 C. Wright Mills and Noam Chomsky in the voluntary exile. The two decades of 1960 postwar Nicaragua with a profound sense United States, Darcy Ribeiro and Paulo and 1980 were lost in Latin America for of humanity, justice, unprejudiced dialogic Freire in Brazil, and Ivan Illich in Europe, any open, progressive social movement. ability, and a down-to-earth and elegant Latin America, and Mexico. We recognized Military dictatorships ruling by torture, sense of humor that I later identified as part that these intellectuals were also and most death, and disappearances took brutal of his Jewish heritage. What I saw in importantly political activists who were control of two-thirds of the continent and Diskin in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua willing to risk their academic stability and millions of human beings, putting on a was praxis at large in the true original their professional lives to put into action silver plate the resources and the Aristotelian sense: praxeis supported by what they had understood in theory. subjugated labor forces of our countries to theoria and poiesis. Knowledge in its three be used by corporate capital and the basic kinds: theoretical, practical, and I believe that the Marxist idea of praxis various Republican or Democrat poietic (the production of something, in began to make sense to our generation administrations of the United States. The this case the superb LASA Report on the precisely when we stepped into fieldwork Pax Americana already stained by the war human rights situation in the Atlantic (or should I say into the minefield of in Vietnam became unbearably bloody in Coast of Nicaragua). working with the rural and urban poor). Latin America. This research was supposed to be objective, I do not know for sure if the LASA Report neutral, empirically disinfected, and In the early 1980s I accompanied Martin was taken seriously into consideration by focused on discrete socio-geographical Diskin to the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua the Sandinista government. I know that spaces: the community, maybe the in a fact-finding mission of a LASA Task sometime later I met briefly Comandante surrounding region, but never the country Force charged with analyzing the human Tomás Borges and other Sandinista and its nation-state, and absolutely by no rights situation of the indigenous and officials, and that the attitude of the means the larger continental and world creole communities.2 The military actions Nicaraguans from the Pacific Coast dimensions. of the Contras, supported and financed by regarding the indigenous and creole peoples the Reagan administration, had wound of the Atlantic had gone through a radical I speak in plural precisely because as a down and the Sandinista government was change, admitting a series of misjudgments social scientist and a humanist I am obliged reshaping the relations of the central and ethnopolitical errors committed by the to acknowledge that ideas and practices are revolutionary government of Nicaragua Sandinistas due to their ignorance of the always social and collective and very with the emerging indigenous forces anthropological reality of the Atlantic seldom the personal possessions of the seeking the regional autonomy of the Coast. Here I must stop for a moment and single individual. Praxis became for us Atlantic Coast. In my somewhat arrogant make a special tribute to two younger literally free action, the activity and naiveté as an activist anthropologist who activist anthropologists who played a creativity exercised in freedom, without the had worked for the revolutionary fundamental role in promoting a restraining conceptual devices of our government of Juan Velasco Alvarado in democratic political process of ethnic conformist and conventional discipline. Peru of the early 1970s, and with a plurality in Nicaragua (and other parts of Praxis, therefore, as free creative activity younger brother who had fought as an Latin America): Charles Hale and Edmund for our generation, aimed at changing and “internationalist” with the Sandinista Gordon (both at the University of Texas, shaping ethical, social, political, and insurgents and reached a high-ranking Austin, and both activist members of economic life in the direction of a more military position in the Sandinista Army, I LASA). just, egalitarian, and humanistic world thought that there was very little that I community. Some of us chose the party, could learn about activist anthropology Nicaragua in the 1980s—like Peru and others the labor movement, others social from this “gringo” friend from MIT and Chile in the 1970s, El Salvador in the movements, others occasionally ended up Oaxaca. Now, after 30 years, I can easily 1980s and 1990s, and the four decades of working for revolutionary or at least confess my condescension—so Latin genocidal war in Guatemala—became a reformist governments. And eventually, in American, so stereotyped, so unfair, and testing ground for anthropologists and Latin America since the 1960s, my especially so confused. Martin Diskin other social scientists to choose between generation of activist-anthropologists guided me through the roughest and most social justice and cultural and political landed in jail or were deported or in troubled ethnic/racial political waters of democracy or the professional rewards of
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ethical indifference and the theoretical ethnocentric and Eurocentric institutions. multidisciplinary field of critical knowledge abstractions of mainstream academia. A In a sense we can say that activist and alternative epistemology where dozens limited number of anthropologists anthropologists and indigenous of intellectuals like Vine Deloria Jr. and throughout the Americas would read and intellectuals have met on a common ground Robert Warrior, colleagues like Jack Forbes, find in the tortured history of the peoples of ideas and action coming from two David Risling, Inés Hernández-Avila, Victor of Latin America the obligation to commit different ways of counterhegemonic Montejo, and Guillermo Delgado, and old to popular causes and disregard the allure construction. The intercrossing boundaries friends from Amazonia, the Andes, and of academic fame, instead investing time, of the different disciplines and humanities Mexico and Guatemala are testimony to intellect, emotions, and imagination in the that are brought to life by ethnic studies the endurance and intellectual sovereignty task of transforming the cool analytical and activist anthropology are radically of ancient and yet truly contemporary discipline of observation into the burning reconfiguring the epistemology of the new people. and often muddy peoples’ struggle for their decolonized social science, a science that own liberation. As in the case of the puts at the center of research and social I often have asked myself this question: interdisciplinary programs of ethnic studies practice the multiple histories and Can we abandon dystopia? When did we that had their origin in the social and civil aspirations of the people rather that the start to neglect utopia and assume rights movement of the 1960s, conceptual reiterated domination of a Euro-American dystopia? When did we begin to take for and ethical innovation and liberation of mode of knowledge. granted that the world we live in is conscience emerged from the praxis of the irremediably unchangeable, that it is a people’s struggle and not precisely from the The long and tortuous process of good world the way it is, with a few monastic cloister of the conservative decolonization in the Americas began hundred thousand people living in imperial university, where professional merits are almost immediately after the European luxury and billions of human beings (and accumulated in proportion to the distance invasion. More than four hundred years other beings) barely surviving or becoming that scientists establish from the people’s ago the Andean Indian intellectual and extinct? When did we start to accept as cause. I am a witness of this existential Quechua speaker Guamán Poma de Ayala normal that 1,300 international transformation, having migrated early in wrote the famous letter to the Spanish King corporations with a concentrated and my academic life from anthropology in Philip III, a manuscript of more than a politically articulated nucleus of 147 Peru, to 25 years of activism in Peru and thousand folios and hundreds of drawings companies—the “centralized elite of Mexico, to return to nonmainstream in which Guamán launches the first power,” the 1 percent of the world academia in California as professor of critique of European colonialism and population—can rule at will over the rest Native American/indigenous studies at UC proposes a “buen gobierno” that would of us, the billions of humans and other Davis. restore Inca social justice and cosmological beings that constitute our world?3 Can we, order. At the same time in Mexico the members of the local and global civil I would argue that the small minority of Nahua intellectual Chimalpahin society, continue to be blind to the fact that anthropologists who have chosen activism Quauhtlehuanitzin was writing the history this transnational corporate class protects are ideologically, politically, and of Mexico in Spanish and Nahuatl, its international capital, its indecently conceptually connected to the various comparing his native society with that of acquired wealth, with the concentrated ethnic agencies that since the civil rights the European invaders. Those critical power of the military empire increasingly struggle of the 1960s have constituted indigenous narratives did not vanish denationalized and privatized? themselves into interdisciplinary programs throughout five centuries of European and departments and have infiltrated the colonial occupation; they went In the last 50 years the rules of the game rigid and outdated structure of the underground or morphed into metaphors have changed radically. In the nineteenth university. To use a United Nations and symbolic rituals, or reconfigured as and early twentieth century, class and metaphor, ethnic studies programs are adapted cosmologies and new utopian anticolonial struggles had clearly increasingly becoming “refugee camps” of aspirations. These are the narratives and demarcated dividing lines between the “indigenous” researchers/instructors who cultural heritage that today constitute the oppressor and the oppressed, between otherwise would have been marginalized core of Native American/indigenous studies capital and labor, between empire and and excluded by fundamentally in the Americas: an ancient and new colonial subjects, between political society
10 and civil society. Hegel’s idea that the civil ideal of a better world, or an upside-down Euro-America and other Third World/ society was a valuable and inevitable aspect world of peasants and popular peripheral regions to accept a of modern social life, a counterbalance to imaginations, a world that can be nonconformist, less conventional, and more the power of the state and the political recomposed, reorganized to improve the progressive use of anthropology. From the society, was still functional. In the last few living conditions of each member of end of the nineteenth century and through decades the idea and practice of civil humanity, becomes now not only the the first half of the twentieth century, society has become increasingly blurred catalyzing idea of popular hope but also a anarchism and socialism played important and vague to the point that nowadays in consubstantial part of the social sciences roles in the construction of a utopian, Latin America we accept that and humanistic intellectual work. While revolutionary social consciousness. I can nongovernmental and grassroots liberal humanism and sciences insist on mention only a few names: anarchist organizations can be financed by interpreting the world (and accepting it), Manuel González Prada and socialists José governments and political parties in power post-Marxist humanism and social sciences Carlos Mariátegui, Víctor Haya de la Torre, or foundations linked to transnational aspire to know the world in order to Luis E. Valcárcel, and Hildebrando Castro corporations of the global North. Our change it and make it better. Pozo in Peru; indigenous Quechua-Aymara margins of independence and autonomy as intellectual Fausto Reinaga in Bolivia; local and global citizens are becoming The socialist project proposes a theory of postrevolutionary Mexican intellectuals increasingly narrow and uncertain, and so knowledge and a science that operates on Vicente Lombardo Toledano and young are our fundamental rights to choose and the implicit assumption that the world Manuel Gamio; indigenous political leader shape our political society. We are asked to must be changed and that the intellectual Quintín Lame in Colombia; and Peru’s participate in a cyclical electoral ceremony, (natural or organic) has an active role in Quechua poet and anthropologist José a kind of imprecise and commoditized this enterprise, a role that goes beyond María Arguedas. All these and other gambling game that is conducive inevitably observation and “objective” theorization of intellectuals, most of them of indigenous to slight changes of the guard within the the phenomenon. The Cartesian “cogito, ancestry, created an environment in which same monolithic and impenetrable club of ergo sum” is being complemented and we young Latin American anthropologists the “rich, famous, and corrupted” elite. finally eroded by a new dictum, “I act, thus in the 1960s understood clearly that the I exist”—act as expression of praxis, as theory and practice of anthropology were Let me go back almost 20 decades in creative action and production. Or as in founded on the ethical premise and the Euro-American history and present a the “existentialist” words of André epistemological imperative that this was the central argument that I would like to Malraux referring to the anticolonial science of the people, at the service of consider as the premise to a larger struggle in Algeria: “I resist, thus we are.” people and their causes and for the discussion about social and political architecture of the new social utopia. activism in anthropology. Almost 170 The establishment in Latin America of years ago three anonymous editions of a praxis as the methodological fulcrum of By the time that modernization theory, short pamphlet titled Manifesto of the activist anthropological research created a under the leadership of Harvard University Communist Party were published in watershed between two scientific sociologist Talcott Parsons and Kennedy London. Marx’s and Engels’s names humanistic and value systems: on one side political appointee Walt Rostow, arrived in appeared only 24 years later in the Leipzig the positivist, unlinked, objective mode of Latin America with all the prestige of “the edition of 1872, when the title was changed knowledge that is basically unconcerned northern wind of innovation,” Latin to Communist Manifesto. Starting with the with the social and political consequences American anthropologists had developed Manifesto and the following construction of research, focusing more on the strong antibodies by reading Marxism and of Marxism as a discipline for social theory advancement of social theory; on the other decolonization texts. We had absorbed the and practice, the long-standing utopian side research programs that put at the writings of Amílcar Cabral and understood tradition of the Mediterranean/European center of their activity the goal of his position on the fundamental role of world, which had become lethargic since intentionally transforming social reality culture in the national liberation the Renaissance and almost died out with through praxis. I could argue that Latin movement; we had read Franz Fanon’s and the Enlightenment, reappears with a central America social science was better Albert Memmi’s critiques of colonial ethnic role in the European social imaginary. The positioned than the social sciences from discrimination and racism; we had enjoyed
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Aimé Césaire’s poetry of liberation and most of those from the North became like Nasa/Paéz participants were actually understood Jean-Paul Sartre’s analyses of us from the South. On a personal note I risking their lives by being at the French colonialism. We were becoming can say that some of my best friends and conference. Finally in 1993 the Barbados familiar with all those young European colleagues, progressive and socially group (III) met in Río de Janeiro, 23 years ethnologists trained in critical theory and conscientious social scientists and activists, after the first meeting, to mourn the death post-Marxism such as Maurice Godelier, were trained not by the Peace Corps of one of its most enlightened members, Claude Meillassoux, Pierre-Philippe Rey, program but rather by the appalling Latin Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, and to address and Georges Balandier. But we were also America social reality. This confirms that it again old indigenous issues of following the debates taking place in U.S. is praxis that does the trick. It is praxis as neocolonialism, wars, land eviction, academia about the role of anthropologists an exercise that verifies knowledge and genocide, human rights abuses, and cultural in the Vietnam War and the imperial use of becomes proof of truthfulness. destruction, now implemented by the anthropologists in Latin America and transnational community of capital and South East Asia. Gerald Berreman, In June 1971 a dozen Latin American presented as the inevitable price to be paid Kathleen Gough, and Noam Chomsky anthropologists accompanied by a U.S. by the weak to allow for the globalization became part of our vocabulary. Armed ethnologist expatriate to Mexico and an of the economy and the establishment of a with these ideas and ideals we were ready Austrian social scientist met on the island “new world order.” to analyze and discuss the validity of of Barbados under the sponsorship of the modernization theory, which stated that the World Council of Churches to discuss the The three Barbados meetings can be read rural poor and the indigenous people were situation of the indigenous people of Latin as a synopsis of 25 years of intellectual poor because they were obsolete; they were America. The Barbados I meeting, as it activity and praxis of a minority of Latin not modern; they lived at the margins of became known, produced an impressive American anthropologists accompanying the market economy and thus were unable volume of denunciations of human and the indigenous peoples’ movement of to take advantage of modernity. ethnic rights abuses by governments, liberation. The declaration of Barbados I, missionaries, the private sector, and even “For the Liberation of the Indigenous You may remember that during the JFK social scientists, together with a short People” (1971) was a strong denunciation administration the ideas of modernization declaration that soon became a banner for and demand to the state, the church, the of Talcott Parsons and Walt Rostow were some of the emerging indigenous private sector, and social scientists to satisfy put into practice by creating the Peace organizations of Mexico and Central and the basic human and ethnic rights of the Corps as a kind of mission of modernity. South America. The Spanish edition of the indigenous people. Barbados II (1977) We in Latin America, at the receiving end book, published in Montevideo, never reflected both the Indians’ and of these ideas and practices, were reached the shelves of bookstores: it was anthropologists’ activism and direct astonished at their naiveté. Where was the burned by the Uruguayan military involvement in the social movement of class analysis? Where were the attempts to dictatorship. This was a curious act of liberation, assuming all the risks of such a understand economic exploitation, political racist zeal and political conservatism, since decision. Some of the indigenous oppression, and racial and ethnic Uruguay is one of the few countries of participants and some of the discrimination? The indigenous peasants Latin America that does not have a anthropologists were already living either are not poor because of their culture, they substantial indigenous population. No clandestinely in their own countries or in are not powerless because they organize indigenous people were present at the exile. The declaration of Barbados III, “The their social life according to their cultural meeting of Barbados I. It would take Articulation of Diversity” (1993), evaluates heritage and therefore they must abandon another six years for the Barbados group to the last 25 years of Latin American their way of life and turn themselves in an convene a larger second meeting of 35 anthropology and its contributions to the impoverished carbon copy of the urban participants, 18 of whom this time were Indian struggle of decolonization. There is lower middle class or proletariat. The active militants of the indigenous Latin little optimism in this assessment, which irony of this period of our common American movement. Some of the recognizes the ethical distortions of history—for those of us from the global indigenous members of Barbados II contemporary theoretical meandering and South and the young U.S. Peace Corps traveled to the island clandestinely. The the self-gratifying solipsism that disguises members from the global North—is that Guatemalan Maya and the Colombian the lack of commitment of academic
12 anthropology to indigenous peoples’ At the end of this talk I would like to argue liberation struggles, and for that matter to that activist anthropology does not emerge the struggles of the oppressed. Finally necessarily from the proverbial ivory tower Barbados III recognizes that, at the end of of universities; rather it takes shape and is the century, the Indian movement of the constantly reformulated through social, Americas is a fundamental factor on the cultural, political, and ethical praxis. As in international scene that will have to be the case of Martin Diskin, activist taken into consideration in any major anthropology is formed by walking decision regarding world peace and together—anthropologist and the people development. (indigenous or not)—the long, winding, and always contradictory collective journey Just a few weeks after the meeting of through the dystopian reality toward our Barbados III, on January 1, 1994, Tzeltal, common utopian world. Tzotzil, Chol, Tojolabal, and Zoque Maya Indians of Chiapas organized into the Zapatista National Liberation Army Endnotes (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, 1 Stefano Varese, “Crítica de la razón distópica: or EZLN) and declared war on the Homenaje a la imaginación utópica de Martin Mexican government, quickly establishing Diskin y Guillermo Bonfil Batalla,” Desacatos, the military occupation of four major Revista de Antropología Social, no. 10 (2002): municipalities in Chiapas, Mexico. An 189–194. indigenous army of eight hundred 2 Martin Diskin, Thomas Bossert, Salomón combatants occupied the city of San Nahmad S., and Stefano Varese, Peace and Cristóbal de las Casas, seized the municipal Autonomy on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua: palace, proclaimed their opposition to the A Report of the LASA Task Force on Human “undeclared genocidal war against our Rights and Academic Freedom (Pittsburgh, PA: Latin American Studies Association, people by the dictators,” and described 1986). their “struggle for work, land, shelter, food, health, education, independence, freedom, 3 Nemesio J. Rodríguez, “Pueblos indígenas democracy, justice, and peace.” The Maya amazónicos: Apuntes para una utopia discreta,” in Selva vida: De la destrucción de la Zapatista movement, which has survived Amazonía al paradigma de la regeneración, and grown for almost 20 years, has had a edited by Stefano Varese, Frédérique Apffel- tremendous influence on the rest of Marglin, and Róger Rumrrill (forthcoming), indigenous peoples throughout the chap. 10. Americas and the world. I also believe that the Maya people from Mexico and Guatemala and all the other indigenous peoples of the Americas mobilized against oppression and exploitation have forced anthropologists and social scientists to reconfigure their assumptions about indigenous peoples/Native Americans and their own commitments to their struggle for ethnic liberation and political sovereignty.
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The Impact of Fellowships on Individuals, Their Institutions, and Their Communities Two to Tango: Franco-Latino and Franco-Maghrebi Queer Transnationalism by Luis Navarro-Ayala | St. Norbert College | [email protected]
Even before starting grammar school in my arts, and literature. Latin American music Writers in Paris (2003), Latin American small hometown in the Mexican state of has long been present in Paris, with intellectuals were key figures of the Parisian Michoacán, I learned like all of the children concerts held in venues ranging from small literary scene throughout the twentieth around me that Cinco de Mayo is a cafés to world-renowned concert halls like century. Rubén Darío (Nicaragua, 1867– patriotic day to celebrate the defeat in 1862 the Olympia. As for dancing, La Peña, not 1916), Vicente Huidobro (Chile, 1893– of the Napoleonic army by Mexican far from the École Normale, is entirely 1948), Pablo Neruda (Chile, 1904–1973), troops. Years later, as an undergraduate, I dedicated to salsa; however, the longest Alejo Carpentier (Cuba, 1904–1980), Jorge studied abroad at l’Université Lumière tradition uniting Latin music and dance in Luis Borges (Argentina, 1899–1986), Julio Lyon II in France to take advantage of its Paris is the Argentinean tango. First played Cortázar (Argentina, 1914–1984), Severo comprehensive program in Latin American in the City of Light’s most sophisticated Sarduy (Cuba, 1937–1993), Octavio Paz studies, which allowed me to study this salons at the turn of the twentieth century, (Mexico, 1914–1998), Carlos Fuentes holiday—as well as events throughout it has now gained widespread popularity. (Mexico, 1928–2012), Gabriel García history—from a French perspective. While For instance, the Paris-Banlieue-Tango Márquez (Colombia, b. 1927), and Mario a doctoral candidate in French and Festival (Paris-Suburb-Tango) is held Vargas Llosa (Peru, b. 1936) are among the Francophone Studies at UCLA, I again throughout the French capital and its numerous Latin American writers who spent an academic year in France. During suburbs every fall. Those who work up an established relationships with their French that stay, I taught for the University of appetite can then enjoy Latin American counterparts. In many cases, these authors California Study Center in Paris, while cuisine, which is booming throughout the are associated with the classical portrait of benefitting from a research fellowship that city: El Sol y La Luna, La Pachanga, the Latin American male who expresses gave me the privileged status of a visiting O’Mexico, and Poco Loco are just a few of himself through machismo. Indeed, it is student scholar (pensionnaire étranger) at its many Latin restaurants. All of Latin worth noting that these men of letters are the prestigious École Normale Supérieure. America’s aromas mix together at their far better known in France than their Situated on rue d’Ulm, at the heart of the tables, where specialties range from Cuban, female peers, making Latin American Latin Quarter and only a few short steps Peruvian, Colombian, and Argentinean literary production abroad a male- from the Pantheon, this elite school dishes to Mexican tequilas, Dominican and dominated pursuit. dedicated to preparing future university Puerto Rican rums, or Chilean piscos and professors offered me an ideal context to wines. Not to be overlooked, Latin Although other Latin American influences explore the significance of the cultural and American film and theater are visible at in France prove more open to women, literary exchanges between France and festivals in Cannes, Paris, Toulouse, and gender plays a crucial role in the perceived Latin America. Above and beyond the Avignon, while fine arts from the region identity of the region. Since Latin advantages of taking up residence at this occupy the walls of all of its major Americans are just as fascinated by the institution dedicated to interdisciplinary museums, which have shown exhibits by French as the French are fascinated by research, my stay in Paris was Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Julio Silva, Latin Americans, my research proposes a transformative because it placed me at the Pablo Reinoso, Juan Carlos Langlois, and new perspective on Frenchness as it has center of a network of cultural and Fernando Botero. been historically conceived through intellectual exchanges that extend well colonial stereotypes. By crossing beyond the borders of metropolitan France, However, the most documented Latin transcultural spaces, the Transcultural throughout the French- and Spanish- American presence in Paris remains Queer discovers new modes of social speaking worlds. literature. As noted by Sylvia Molloy in engagement and finds ways to create La diffusion de la littérature transverse dialogues inclusive of racial, The Latin American presence in France is hispanoaméricaine en France au XXe siècle cultural, and sexual specificities. evident in music and dance, food and (1972) and Jason Weiss in The Lights of Corresponding to the “semiotic zones of restaurants, cinema and theater, the fine Home: A Century of Latin American contact” that Yuri Lotman identifies in
14 Universe of the Mind (1990), these history of colonial fantasies and cultural space of the garçonnière in Buenos transnational spaces are uniquely qualified inequalities that haunt the colonizer as well Aires into a “homosexual brothel,” to reconceptualize Frenchness and French as the colonized. Famously outlined by Hernández-Catá uses the French capital influence as defined in local cultures around Edward Said in Orientalism (1978), the itself as the center for sexual “degeneracy.” the globe. Thanks to discussions with my complexities of the Self-Other relationship The nationalist impetus of these narratives peers at the École Normale Supérieure in between Europeans and Arabs were uses the exclusion of the Other to prohibit Paris, I recognized viable parallels not only notably illustrated in queer fiction by marginalized sexualities, making the main between the Maghreb and Latin America as André Gide’s novel L’immoraliste (1902), characters Lotmanian boundary figures places of origin for migratory movements, set in Algeria. For better or for worse, I who experience inclusion and exclusion but also between France and the United argue, Latin American and North African simultaneously. Given this status, they are States as host nations for first- and cultures have both come to reverse the gaze pushed from the periphery of national second-generation immigrant youth. As a of the colonizer and to view Frenchness culture, expelled out of the Ibero-American queer who migrated from Mexico to the itself as queer. In this process, many matrix, and obliged to take refuge in the United States, I occupy a native informant characters in Spanish- and French-language French space. In fact, both narratives role akin to those in Francophone narratives overcome the dominant conceal the main characters’ homosexual narratives by Moroccan writers like Rachid paradigm of the formerly colonized subject desires until they find themselves in such a O. and Abdellah Taïa. Their frequent who acts as a transnational object in the French refuge. As Emilio Bejel suggests in references to their birthplaces—combined European culture. Gay Cuban Nation (2001, 4), the with my experiences learning firsthand homosexual body participates by about immigrant youth in Paris—led to the While it has long been acknowledged that “exclusion” in “defining the nation to epiphany that I should bring together France customarily thought of North which it does not belong.” In these North Africa and Latin America in my Africa as a queer space permitting narratives, the homosexual subject is not research. promiscuity, it has less often been noted only excluded from national culture but that Latin America looks to France for the also specifically rejected into French Comparing these two regions in the global same purpose, or that Frenchness has culture. South enabled me to develop comparisons likewise come to represent an imagined between “marginal” spaces that hold vastly queer space enabling sexual explorations in In contrast, the Maghreb characterizes the different cultural ties to France. In this North Africa today. This comparison terrasse de café as the public sphere, where regard, my research responds to Françoise across linguistic borders thus moves the cross-cultural encounter with the Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, who argue in beyond the traditional colonizer-colonized French Other in commercial interactions Minor Transnationalism (2005, 7) for the relationship to ask a broader question: to (tourism, prostitution, global media) leads need to examine “creative interventions what extent do transnational encounters to masculine transformation. Initially, that networks of minoritized cultures facilitate or challenge sexual agency in Frenchness tends to reinforce the produce within and across national postcolonial societies where Frenchness traditional dynamics of unequal exchange. boundaries.” My dissertation, “Queering alternately represents a corrupting influence In Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in Transcultural Encounters in Latin or a liberating ideal? the Maghreb (2000), Jarrod Hayes argues American and Francophone Contexts: that this power structure reflects how Space, Identity, and Frenchness,” ultimately In the Latin American context, the French- European male tourists may conform to deployed postcolonial theories of identity inspired garçonnière serves as a private normativity at home while engaging in in relation to Moroccan as well as French space for homosexual permissiveness. In “homosex in the Orient,” where they may and Argentinean subjects. As places of works such as José González Castillo’s Los escape from jeopardizing “their work or pleasure, French spaces in the invertidos (1914) or Alfonso Hernández- heterosexual privilege” (30). Yet, young works that I studied become the locus of Catá’s El ángel de Sodoma (1928), the North Africans in narratives like Mohamed meetings between locals and foreigners Transnational Queer is defined in contrast Choukri’s Le pain nu (1980) and Rachid whereby they negotiate new transcultural to the “type” of individuals accepted, or O’s L’enfant ébloui (1995), Chocolat chaud relationships. Of course, such interactions not accepted, by the nationalist agenda. (1998), and Ce qui reste (2003) manage to occur against the backdrop of a long While González Castillo turns the French maneuver around Frenchness in order to
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develop queer agency, positively Gide, André transforming the largely homophobic 1902. L’immoraliste. Paris: Mercure de France. spaces that they must navigate as sexual subjects. González Castillo, José 1914. Los invertidos. Buenos Aires: Editores In essence, my research proposes a type of Puntosur. parallelism: Orientalism for the French corresponds to Frenchness for the Latin Hayes, Jarrod American imaginary, and each demands 2000. Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in that the Transnational Queer create unique the Maghreb. Chicago: University of Chicago forms of agency. My ongoing projects Press. continue to analyze how exile from the sexual repression of a home culture pushes Hernández-Catá, Alfonso the Transnational Queer to search for 1928. El ángel de Sodoma. Madrid: Mundo sexual fulfillment abroad. Unfortunately, Latino. due to the lingering effects of colonial paradigms, such experiences tend to fall Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu-mei Shih, eds. prey to exploitation and racial bias still 2005. Minor Transnationalism. Durham: Duke today. However, my approach seeks to University Press. highlight the ways in which local youth may move beyond the colonizer’s Lotman, Yuri M. homoerotic gaze to pursue self-realizing 1990. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory subject formation, whether their of Culture. London: I. B. Tauris. transcultural homoerotic encounters occur at home or abroad. Through literary and Molloy, Sylvia intercultural creativity, these figures 1972. La diffusion de la littérature hispano- surmount the social conditions involved in américaine en France au XXe siècle. Paris: sexual tourism to forge new sites of Presses Universitaires de France. resistance to global economic power O., Rachid structures. Although Frenchness may still act here as a fantasized construct to defeat 1995. L’enfant ébloui. Paris : Éditions Gallimard (or love only from a distance), intellectuals, 1998. Chocolat chaud. Paris : Éditions writers, artists, and innumerable Latin Gallimard. Americans continue to dream of visiting Paris . . . since, after all, it takes two to 2003. Ce qui reste. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. tango. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. References Weiss, Jason Bejel, Emilio 2003. The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin 2001. Gay Cuban Nation. Chicago: University American Writers in Paris. New York: of Chicago Press. Routledge.
Choukri, Mohamed 1980. Le pain nu. Paris: Librairie François Maspero.
16 on the profession
Transitando del yo al nosotros, y del nosotros a los otros: Vivencias y reflexiones sobre fellowships en los Estados Unidos por Cecilia Barja Chamas | Praxis Pública | [email protected]
Sentado a pocos metros de mí, Jeffrey auditorio otros estudiantes y comunidad en Mi paso por universidades tan prestigiosas, Sachs me miraba intermitentemente general lo escuchaban sin más prejuicio. hace que hoy mi desafío de vida sea mientras me respondía. En la mesa distinto. Soy parte de la Fundación Avina ovalada, 20 Yale World Fellows de distintas Estos momentos ejemplifican bien lo que (www.avina.net) desde el 2010, y mi partes del mundo y miembros del equipo representa para mi haber tenido la vocación está menos centrada en mi visión escuchaban en un intenso silencio. Mi voz oportunidad de ser jugadora en la cancha, de la realidad, y más en cómo se construye estaba áspera y entrecortada por las pero también haber tenido la posibilidad de el cambio de forma colaborativa con otros emociones encontradas de tener a uno de ser público, directora técnica o jugadora actores: actores distintos, opuestos, los economistas mas reconocidos del sentada en el banquillo de suplentes. Y esta desconocidos. Arriesgarse en agendas mundo, pero quien llamaba al no es una distinción de roles, sino de complejas de construcción de lo público, recientemente depuesto presidente perspectivas del desafío, construcción de implica tener la capacidad de generar las boliviano Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada un equipo, medición de las fuerzas adversas, y condiciones para que el cambio se dé, más genio político. Nos dimos la mano cuando de posibilidad de anotar el gol. que presumir que nosotros personificamos se despidió del grupo, fue una mañana fría el cambio. en Washington, DC, de finales del 2004. El privilegio de ser parte de la comunidad de Yale World Fellows, de los Mason Catorce meses antes estaba sentada en una Fellows de Harvard Kennedy School colchoneta en la parroquia de la gracias a la beca del Ash Center for emblemática Iglesia de San Francisco en La Democratic Governance and Innovation, Paz, con otros ocho jóvenes en nuestro del Global Competitiveness Leadership tercer día de huelga de hambre pidiendo la Program de Georgetown University, me renuncia del entonces presidente Gonzalo ayudó a abrir nuevas dimensiones mentales, Sánchez de Lozada. La mayor crisis en la espirituales, sentimentales y de democracia boliviana, tenía aquel 17 de discernimiento. Amplió mi visión de octubre de 2003 a decenas de muertos, procesos locales-nacionales, a tendencias cientos de heridos y miles de personas globales. Extendió mis ciclos de movilizadas y en huelga de hambre a lo conocimiento de historia de años o largo y ancho del país. Era difícil pensar décadas, a siglos y milenios. Desarrollo que el hombre que salía en un helicóptero habilidades de reflexión y manejo de lo con rumbo desconocido, era el mismo con complejo, confuso y volátil, para evitar quien almorzamos en palacio de gobierno reacciones basadas en el instinto, el solo unos meses antes, con todos los prejuicio, y la ignorancia. concejales y Alcalde de La Paz para compartir criterios sobre como salir de la La posibilidad de hacer historia solo cobra crisis severa de gobernabilidad que el país sentido, si tienes la oportunidad de afrontaba y que afectaba brutalmente a la reflexionar y estudiar sobre ella desde la sede de gobierno. distancia. Estudiar solo tiene sentido, si su objetivo es construir en el terreno mejores Y la tuerca da una vuelta más. Primavera procesos sociales y bienes públicos para las de 2008, auditorio lleno del Harvard grandes mayorías, y no solo engolosinarte Kennedy School. Gonzalo Sánchez de de conocimiento estéril. El ambiente Lozada, notoriamente envejecido pero con desafiante, pero seguro, de las universidades la misma agilidad mental, sentado con tiene como complemento la acción en el otras tres personas en el podio. Un grupo campo que muchas veces es mediocre, pero de activistas de la Escuela de Derecho que se juega el pellejo. protestaban afuera, mientras que en el
17 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3 on the profession
An Embarrassment of Riches: Reflections on Visiting Fellowships by Raphael B. Folsom | University of Oklahoma | [email protected]
The phrase “embarrassment of riches” is fellow’s book manuscript and then proceed, most exciting scholarship now being done one that comes readily to mind when over the course of a three- to four-hour on New Spain deals with the visual culture thinking about the years I spent as a seminar, to tear it to shreds. For most of the colony. My own research has visiting fellow at Southern Methodist fellows, I suspect the experience is as revealed that the Chichimeca War had a University’s Clements Center for Southwest difficult to weather as it is salutary for the powerful impact on the ways race was Studies and the David Rockefeller Center future book. I recently had lunch with a represented in the paintings and pictorial for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at retired army general whose comments on codices of colonial Mexico. Analysis of the Harvard. The scholarly, cultural, the military brought the Clements seminar visual and cultural aftermath of the war bibliographical, and aesthetic resources to mind. He told me that most raw recruits now forms the manuscript’s analytical core. available to fellows often seem, like the realize, after a their first few months in the The development of this project at universe, to be incalculably vast and army, that the harsh treatment they receive DRCLAS reminded me vividly of the constantly expanding. There are other from their drill sergeants is in fact the changes one undergoes in the course of reasons the phrase seems apt. In some expression of the highest kind of love there traveling abroad. Each university is a measure this is because of the is. Severity in the training process foreign country, with its own tastes, culture, embarrassment one feels at wanting to translates into survival in combat. The practices, and taboos. As with travel devote all of one’s time to the talks, films, critiques I received at the Clements Center abroad, the process of adapting to and debates, exhibitions, libraries, interesting seminar burned away much that was weak adopting elements of that foreign culture people, conferences, hors d’oeuvres, and or worthless in my manuscript and made it helps one become a better thinker and wine on offer, and to neglect the work one a vastly better book. This exposure to peer better person. I know the book that comes got the fellowship to do. There is a further review was also a key preparation for the out of my research at DRCLAS will be far a touch of awkwardness in the sensation rigors of the tenure process. I remain better for having traveled and lived among one often has, while walking in the groves enormously grateful to the colleagues who the Harvardians. of academic paradise, that all scholars organized and participated in that seminar, should be so fortunate. Many, if not most, and I am happy to take this opportunity to Visiting fellowships are not without their deserving professors do not get such thank them once again for putting the book pitfalls. There were two quotations I taped opportunities for focused research. I on its present trajectory. over my desk at DRCLAS that helped me suspect that many visiting fellows are a avoid them. One is from a letter quoted in little uneasy with what they fear is their My book on the Yaquis, now entitled Boswell’s Life of Johnson, in which undeserved privilege. I certainly was. Imperial Ironies, was also enriched by a Johnson tries to remedy his biographer’s Here, nevertheless, are a few reflections on second visiting fellowship at DRCLAS. tendency to procrastinate: “The dissipation the topic of visiting fellowships. Harvard’s unparalleled libraries, and the of thought, of which you complain, is conversations I had with Latin nothing more than the vacillation of a mind The best thing about them is, indisputably, Americanists working in a broad variety of suspended between different motives, and the time and space they allow you to do disciplines, further sharpened my thinking changing its direction as any motive gains research. Over the course of my two about Yaqui history. Those same resources or loses strength. If you can but kindle in fellowships, I completed work on a made it possible for me to complete the your mind any strong desire, if you can but manuscript dealing with the Yaqui people research on a second book project on the keep predominant any wish for some under Spanish colonial rule that is now Chichimeca War, a pivotal series of conflicts particular excellence or attainment, the under contract with Yale University Press. in sixteenth-century north Mexico. gusts of imagination will break away.” The Perhaps the key moment in that book’s life DRCLAS is among the largest Latin mind of the visiting fellow often finds itself came at the Clements Center’s manuscript American studies centers in the world; in Boswell’s circumstance of being seminar. This seminar, which almost all while there I was able to interact with art suspended between different motives. The Clements Fellows pass through, brings historians, anthropologists, and conflicting desires to gorge on archives, to together all the visiting fellows, most of the ethnohistorians working on topics close to write, and to dabble in talks, films, and Center’s affiliated faculty, and three outside mine. Those conversations brought about cocktail parties are ever present. The key readers who fly in from all over the a deep shift in the way I think about the to a fellow’s success is that Johnsonian country. All seminar participants read the Chichimeca War. I learned that some of the faculty of kindling one’s desire for some
18 particular excellence. The ubiquity of community that her fellowship helped her way to think of visiting fellowships is as the excellence of all kinds to be found at to make. Only institutions such as the beginning of a long cycle of reciprocal Southern Methodist University and University of Oklahoma, where I teach, support and exchange. Over time, fellows Harvard helps one keep that desire that have a very strong commitment to may be able to help others as they have predominant in one’s mind. The second research and an intellectually magnanimous been helped, and it is incumbent upon them quotation I kept handy came from the late faculty and administration can give their to pass on the generosity they have Norman Cantor, a scholar who resembled full support to scholars who win visiting received. Johnson in learning, wit, and impetuous fellowships. OU has been completely crustiness: “The American academic supportive of my research agenda, and I world,” he wrote, “is a strange place. There have received only the kindest treatment 95 percent of humanists cannot do first rate from my colleagues. In this, also, I am work because they do not have the time, aware of being exceptionally fortunate. leisure, facilities, or income. The other 5 percent get all the plum jam and often In thinking about the impact of visiting don’t do their best work because they are fellowships on my career, home institution, not pressed hard enough.” Pressing oneself and community, I’ve been struck by the hard, in the absence of a boss or importance of sharing the wealth. In the department chair, is the daily challenge of end, the visiting fellow’s embarrassment of the research fellow. riches is really not for the fellow to enjoy alone. What is the best way of sharing it? It is critical to remember that these Publication is one key way. The grant fellowships cannot be successful without maker and the fellow’s home institution the support of one’s home institution. I have communicated in the most forceful know of a colleague (not associated with terms that they value the fellow’s any of the institutions mentioned in this intellectual passions, curiosity, and work. essay) who, on informing her employer that Publishing one’s research is a fitting she had received an prestigious yearlong expression of thanks. One can also share fellowship, was told that she would only be the wealth with one’s students in the allowed to leave for a single quarter. It was classroom. Knowledge of how excellent only after a great deal of pleading that she scholarship is done and what is going on at was allowed to leave for two quarters. the frontiers of one’s field is something This was a welcome extension, but the both undergraduates and graduate students university’s policy nonetheless truncated are eager to hear about. A further effort her research fellowship by almost three I’ve made to share my experiences with my months and rendered it impossible for her home institution has been to run a to remain at the granting institution’s grant-writing workshop for graduate excellent libraries for the summer. Another students in my department. Fellowships colleague (also not from any university like those I’ve had at the Clements Center mentioned here) told me that she returned and DRCLAS have been an extraordinary from her sojourn as a research fellow to boon to my career, and it has been a find that colleagues at her home institution pleasure to guide OU graduate students no longer wanted anything to do with her. through the arduous process of applying Some combination of jealousy and for research grants like these. Another way resentment made it impossible for them to of sharing the intellectual riches is to respond generously to her good fortune. maintain one’s ties to the granting They were also unable to appreciate the communities and to support them in contribution to the local intellectual whatever way one can. Perhaps the best
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Argentina, los juicios y los derechos humanos por Gratzia Villarroel, Associate Editor | St. Norbert College | [email protected] y Roberto Gargarella, Associate Editor | CONICET | [email protected]
Hemos decidido dedicar una parte marcha por las propias administraciones significativa de este nuevo número al democráticas (las llamadas leyes de “punto análisis de la reapertura de los juicios por final” y “obediencia debida”, durante el violaciones de derechos humanos en la gobierno de Raúl Alfonsín; y el indulto Argentina. Ello, por varias razones: En dictado por el presidente Carlos Menem). primer lugar, se trata de un tema de Para examinar la cuestión a través de importancia para todos los que están miradas y aproximaciones diversas, interesados en cuestiones de teoría convocamos a especialistas de primera democrática, y preocupados —en línea, dedicados al estudio de la justicia particular— por los modos en que una transicional, y enfocados en el caso de la democracia debe lidiar con el pasado Argentina: Par Engstrom, Sam Ferguson, autoritario. ¿De qué forma una sociedad Sévane Garibian y Ram Natarajan. decente y responsable debe asumir y tratar las responsabilidades existentes en relación con las graves faltas que se han cometido durante el período de autoritarismo que procedió a la llegada de la democracia? La cuestión resulta relevante, también, para aquellos interesados en teoría del castigo, y preocupados por reflexionar sobre los modos en que una comunidad debe reprochar los graves crímenes cometidos por una parte de ella contra la otra. Más específicamente, entendemos que la reapertura de los juicios en la Argentina resulta muy iluminadora sobre la importancia vital de la movilización popular en la discusión de los asuntos públicos. En la Argentina, en efecto, dicha movilización, masiva e insistente, por parte de la sociedad civil, movimientos sociales y ONGs, confluyó para obligar a un cambio radical en las políticas oficiales. Gracias a esta presión social, se pudo revertir una serie de decisiones tomadas por el poder público —tanto por las ramas políticas del gobierno, como por la rama judicial— que incluyeron, entre otras medidas, normas de perdón dictadas tanto por la propia dictadura (en forma de una ley de autoamnistía), como otras puestas en
20 debates
Judging Memory by Sam Ferguson | Yale University | [email protected]
For two decades, “memory, truth, and to amnesty (to forgetting) is memory For the past five years, I have closely justice” was emblazoned on banners, through trials. followed Argentina’s human rights trials for spray-painted on miles of blank walls, an upcoming book. During 2009 and shouted loudly at protest marches, and This is a laudable ambition. Argentina— 2010, I attended most of the hearings of a penned in countless editorials as the and the world—must remember the last criminal case against 18 officers from rallying cry to repeal two laws passed in dictatorship to prevent a return of the hell Argentina’s Naval Mechanics School the wake of Argentina’s democratic of state terrorism. Memory is also a (Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la transition that had effectively provided valuable end because the dictatorship’s Armada, ESMA), sometimes called the amnesty for the perpetrators of the victims were anonymously discarded into Auschwitz of the South. Every day, I saw country’s so-called Dirty War. When the the river or burned in mass graves; memory this tension play out in the courtroom. laws were finally repealed in 2003, 20 years becomes a substitute for the ordinary after the return of democracy and 16 years rituals of mourning that have been denied One notable example illustrates the point. after their passage, the rallying cry to the family members of the military’s In November 2010, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, transformed from a political slogan into a victims, a way of bringing the past into now Pope Francis, was called to testify theoretical justification for prosecution. public life. about two Jesuit priests who were Judgment, it was argued, was necessary not disappeared in May 1976 when he was only to mete out punishment to those Nevertheless, memory is not ordinarily the head of the Jesuit order in Argentina. The responsible for the forced disappearance of object of a criminal trial, a fact that has priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, over nine thousand citizens during caused significant tension in Argentina’s were detained during a raid on the Bajo Argentina’s last military regime between recent wave of prosecutions. An ordinary Flores slum and secretly taken to the 1976 and 1983, but to discover and trial considers only the evidence that may ESMA. Both were hooded, shackled, and disseminate the truth of what happened so prove or disprove the charges at issue. starved. Neither was allowed to properly as to instill a social memory of Argentina’s When memory is introduced as an object of relieve himself for some time, and each was horrific past. “Can we achieve a real, the trial, the foundation of legal relevance forced to wear his soiled clothing for over a integral, and effective regime of human is disturbed, as what is significant for month. Yorio, the more political of the rights in our country if we throw a cloak of memory may not be relevant to the charges two, was drugged, interrogated, and forgetting over one of the worst violations at issue. In other words, if a normal trial threatened with electrocution. After five that’s ever occurred in our country?” asked asks what the defendant did, a memory days, the two priests were transferred to a deputy Araceli Estela Méndez de Ferreyra trial asks the larger and harder question of secret country home on the outskirts of during the congressional debate over why he did it and how it came to pass. Buenos Aires, and after five months, they repealing the amnesty laws, echoing a Likewise, using trials to foster social were drugged and abandoned to their fate common sentiment. memory changes the relationship between in an open field. the court and the viewing public. The desire for memory and truth was not Ordinarily, the public acts as a check on the Activists were interested in Bergoglio’s cast as an ancillary hope, in the sense that judiciary. Public access to the courts is testimony for two reasons. First, he had trials might uncover truth and instill guaranteed by right to ensure that long been accused of failing to protect the memory while pursuing justice. Rather, the proceedings are conducted fairly. But when two priests, and the activists saw his proponents of repealing Argentina’s memory is the object of the trial, the public testimony as a chance to cross-examine him amnesty conceived of memory and truth as becomes an audience. The end of the trial about the incident. Second, as the highest- equal objectives alongside justice. When is not just a verdict but a lesson (or, in case ranking member of the Argentine Catholic Argentina’s Supreme Court upheld the of disagreement about memory, a debate). Church at the time of his testimony, he congressional repeal of the amnesty laws in A memory trial demands an audience so served as a proxy for the church at large. 2005 in the Simón decision, it held that the that someone may learn the lessons of the Nevertheless, his testimony on the issues in amnesty laws were “constitutionally hearing. dispute was completely irrelevant. In 1985, intolerable” because they were “oriented during the trial of the junta (one of two toward ‘forgetting’ grave violations of cases prosecuted in the 1980s before the human rights.”1 So described, the antidote amnesty laws were passed) the Federal
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Criminal Appeals Court had already Bergoglio, as if the trial could and should destructive dimensions as much as it was to established that both Yorio and Jalics had answer such a question. prove the individual charges in the case. been illegally detained in the ESMA, and Survivor testimony was sometimes the court had convicted Admiral Emilio For the human rights lawyers, Bergoglio’s repetitive, irrelevant, or redundant, but the Massera for their kidnapping. When answers served as a representation of the stories of kidnapping, torture, sensory Bergoglio was called to testify about their church at large. He admitted that he did deprivation, isolation, terror, and ordeal in 2010, only one defendant was not speak out and did not file judicial humiliation served to illustrate the scope of charged in the incident, retired Admiral charges when he learned of Yorio’s and the atrocity, and were a mechanism that Oscar Montes. Montes, the former chief of Jalics’s disappearances. But he insisted that reminded the public at large what had naval operations on the Navy General he worked behind the scenes to save Yorio happened in Argentina not so long ago. Staff, was charged under a theory of and Jalics by securing audiences with Particularly shocking was the testimony of command responsibility. To prove the case dictator Jorge Videla and Admiral Massera. several dozen victims who were put against Montes, the prosecution had to At the end of the trial, Zamora said that it through the ESMA’s “process of prove that Montes was in the chain of was not enough. “This trial has shown the recuperation,” an inquisition-like command and supervised the officers that accomplice role of the Catholic Church,” experiment where prisoners could win their kidnapped Yorio and Jalics. Montes Zamora argued during his summation. freedom if they renounced their political argued that Admiral Massera, his superior, Judge Castelli disagreed. “It’s completely commitments and adopted more “normal” had circumvented the chain of command false to say that Jorge Bergoglio ratted out lives. Some women who had been and that as a matter of fact he had no [his] priests. . . . We analyzed it, we heard guerrillas were encouraged to put on power over decisions at the ESMA. The this version, we looked at the evidence, and makeup and embrace their feminine side; fact that Yorio and Jalics were kidnapped we understand that his behavior has no military officers took some of the male and that they were held in the ESMA was legal ramification. . . . If not, we would prisoners out to soccer games and for not in dispute. have denounced him,” Judge Castelli told drinks on the town, all in an effort to help La Nacion after Bergoglio was named them “recuperate” from being political If Bergoglio had anything to say about Pope. subversives. Some human rights activists Montes’s command responsibility (the only also saw the trial as an opportunity to legally relevant question regarding Yorio’s If Zamora’s pronouncement was defend the activism of the victims, and Jalics’s detention) nobody asked. premature—how could he comment on an sometimes turning the courtroom into a Instead, activists grilled Bergoglio for hours entire institution, when only a shred of seat of political debate rather than legal over his alleged involvement in the incident evidence about the church had surfaced?— inquiry. The trial was also in conversation and the relationship between the military Castelli’s answer reflected the depths to with the perceived failures of the junta and the church hierarchy. “Did any which memory has been superimposed democratic transition. “We have to end the member of the ecclesiastical hierarchy upon justice and how the two were discourse of the repressor,” human rights reach an agreement with the military junta conflated. Bergoglio was not a defendant lawyer Rodolfo Yanzón said in his that before a priest was detained the in the case; prosecutors and the summation at the ESMA trial, arguing that military would inform their ranking instructional judge had never subpoenaed public discourse during the transition had bishop?” human rights lawyer Luis Zamora evidence to investigate Bergoglio’s role in justified the military repression by framing asked, among other, similar questions. The the incident, archives from the Jesuits and the violence of the dictatorship as a war. judges gave Zamora and other lawyers the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires had never Even the defense partook in the memory ample room to pursue the line of been examined, and witnesses related to exercise. Defendant Ricardo Cavallo, for questioning, clearly tolerating the more Bergoglio’s role in the disappearances had instance, wrote a 50,000-word treatise on ambitious memory purposes of the hearing. not been interviewed. the history of the guerrilla movements in Indeed, one of the judges found the topic Argentina for his final defense. It was odd worth engaging. “What was the church’s The investigation of the church was just from a legal perspective, as Cavallo had and the Vatican’s posture in front of the one example of memory and truth that flatly denied the charges against him. But dictatorship?” Judge Germán Castelli asked filtered into the courtroom. The object of he saw a moral obligation to defend the the trial was to show the ESMA in all its conduct of the navy.
22 The bigger question is whether using the Endnotes courts to promote memory is appropriate. 1 Causa S.C. 1767; L. XXXVIII, “Recurso de Political philosopher Hannah Arendt hecho deducido por la defensa de Simón, Julio famously argued in her critique of the trial Héctor y otros s/ privación de la libertad, etc. of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem that — causa N. 17.768,” June 14, 2005, p. 120. historical questions have no place in the 2 Mark Osiel, Mass Atrocity, Collective courtroom, for the impulse to provoke Memory, and the Law. (New Brunswick, NJ: memory and truth tends to suffocate those Transaction Publishers, 2000), 3. interested in the tedious business of sorting through the evidence against individual defendants. In other words, when the courtroom is used for historical projection to create a true record of the past, there is a strong impulse to instrumentalize the trial; an official history presumes only one conclusion, namely a guilty verdict for the defendants. To this I would add other concerns: What should be remembered? Whose memory? From which perspective? Are there false memories and perspectives? Should courts render judgment on the past? There are also practical concerns: when memory is placed at the center of trials, the judicial process becomes long and tedious.
Others, such as the legal scholar Mark Osiel, have defended using trials as a mechanism to provoke social memory. In his book Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory, and the Law, Osiel argues that so long as the proceedings respect procedural norms, trials as public spectacles can be useful in solidifying the rule of law by inculcating society with liberal-legal values. During periods of democratic transition, Osiel believes that “the need for public reckoning with the question of how such horrific events could have happened is more important to democratization than the criminal law’s more traditional objectives.”2
The debate between these two positions may never end, but we should be aware of the tension.
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Courtrooms and Legacies of Violence by Ram Natarajan | New York University | [email protected]
In 2010 in the city of La Plata, Argentina, a between the junta’s collaborators and those disappeared children accused the surviving trial of 14 members of Argentina’s 1976– the junta once persecuted flare into new mothers who came to court of profiting 1983 military regime culminated in hostilities within courtrooms. In this essay, from their suffering. He did this when violence. Victims and activists from all based on three years of ongoing judges were engrossed in work, by pointing over Argentina attended the verdict, and as ethnographic research on Argentina’s at the white handkerchiefs the mothers was customary in this trial, proceedings human rights violation cases, I draw wore, and then laughing and rubbing his took place in a large theater, with judges, attention to how the contentious, hands in the sign for dirty money. A attorneys, and defendants sitting on the acrimonious situations that victims, court different indicted officer caught sight of the stage; victims and their supporters sitting officials, and former operatives confront woman who had accused him of rape and level with the stage in the orchestra seating; within courtrooms are part of Argentina’s called her a fat bitch, before pointing her and defendants’ family members and legal adjudication of crimes against out to the other accused defendants, who friends sitting separately and directly above humanity. It is the human context of the fixedly stared at her and smirked. everyone, in the second-floor balcony. trials, the gritty interpersonal dimension of what transpires within trial chambers, that Exchanges between those once persecuted This use of space, designed to most concerns me here. I ask that we and those accused of violations also accommodate big crowds and give pause and consider how life within occurred more passively, but no less importance to the proceedings, contributed courtrooms in Argentina shows how subtly adversely. Seeing abusers in court and to the chaos that ensued after the judges’ violent juridical efforts to overcome past hearing attorneys narrate what had announcement of the verdict, in which the violence can be. happened to other victims was enough to tribunal convicted all 14 defendants and unsettle those who had already suffered. labeled their actions as genocide. Many former detainees, kin of the Observing court officials handcuff the man Following this pronouncement, one of the disappeared, and human rights activists who had abducted her, a woman, Carmen, convicted operatives immediately sprang took great interest in regularly attending who had been detained along with her out of his seat and defied the conviction by trials. Some likened their attendance to an daughter and had survived while her flamboyantly waving his hands in the sign addiction; others described it as a political daughter did not, suddenly felt villainous. of victory. Straightaway, as the guards and social commitment. Within “I am the bad one now,” she said. “In a subdued and forced the operative offstage, courtrooms, victims and other activists movie the military officers would be the the victims and activists seated in the frequently confronted accused defendants good guys. I would be the villain.” orchestra turned on the balcony of with pictures of the disappeared, cursed the Moments later, when a prosecutor began defendants’ supporters. Pumping their fists defendants, or jeered when the accused describing cases of rape, Carmen became and shouting, the victims and activists officers and civilians blew kisses to their anguished. “My daughter was pretty,” likened the defendants’ families and friends loved ones. For many victims and kin of Carmen said. “God only knows what they to Nazis and told them that they’d be the disappeared, the hurt at being did to her.” found wherever they went. Many in the persecuted and battered for no real, balcony screamed back, “Go look for the tangible reason and the open wounds of Within courtrooms, many human rights disappeareds’ bones in the potter’s field.” A not knowing what happened to the activists and individuals once persecuted by few men in the balcony began to punch disappeared are ongoing and unresolvable, the junta also became aggressors toward members of the press who shared their despite criminal prosecutions of the attorneys representing indicted soldiers and space. Others threw objects into the perpetrators. civilians. An estimated 70 percent of the orchestra. The judges and other attorneys 407 soldiers and civilians who have stood and guards sat silently on stage through Many of the accused former soldiers and trial have received legal representation this, letting the hostilities rage on. civilians, meanwhile, seethed in the from state public defenders, attorneys in presence of those who leveled accusations their thirties or forties who may or may not Across Argentina, trial proceedings against them. They continued to regard the share their clients’ beliefs but either prosecuting the repression carried out by people the junta once persecuted as the accepted the assignments because they the dismantled junta are as highly charged enemy. An officer charged with infiltrating work for tribunals assigned human rights as this verdict in La Plata. Tensions groups and kidnapping mothers of violation cases, or else volunteered and
24 were promised promotions and modest months, in which state prosecutors and Yasmin Moll, Amy Lasater-Wille, Adrienne salary raises due to the unpalatable nature distinct teams of private attorneys took Klein, Annie Claus, Jessica Hardin, and of the cases. Many victims and activists turns one after the other and reiterated Sally Merry and Bambi Schieffelin for wise accepted the public defenders’ work as descriptions of each incident of human counsel on various drafts, and the Wenner indispensable—since achieving justice rights violations anew, often illustrating Gren Foundation, Andrew Mellon requires genuine defenses—and were their presentations with pictures of the Foundation/Social Sciences Research consistently polite to these public cracked walls of torture centers or pictures Council, and National Science Foundation defenders, at least until these state lawyers’ of the disappeared, so that judges and for funding my research. defenses took the side of the accused. A defendants could know and feel, as public defender who used her closing approximately as they could, what it is to argument to depict her army clients as be a victim. victims, as people waging a justified war, was deliberately bumped up against in Trials of human rights violations have thus courtroom hallways by plaintiffs’ attorneys, far produced hundreds of convictions and a ostracized and rebuffed within the handful of acquittals. They have generated courthouse by victims and activists, and an archive, the case report of each tribunal, denounced in print and television accessible online. They have also created interviews as a sympathizer to repression. an industry of new occupations: The state public defenders’ ministry prosecutors specializing in human rights ultimately fired this publicly vilified defense violations, psychologists who counsel attorney from all future human rights victims who testify and accompany them to violation cases, as both a reprimand and a the stand, camera operators who videotape way to protect her. The fact that many daily sessions. Day after day, the weight of victims had been persecuted for their own trial sessions accumulates in the bodies of beliefs and that many activists were the judges, attorneys, audience members, sympathetic to those who have suffered and defendants, making the courtroom intolerance didn’t mean that victims and itself an arena of a conflict that has yet to activists accepted and tolerated those who be extinguished. For me, attending disagreed with them. criminal proceedings all over Argentina and sitting in on sessions in the public galleries In all trials, hostilities coexisted with efforts has been an experience of seeing how much to diminish tensions, whereby judges anguish and anger the junta has left in its checked in on the well-being of audience wake. Many courtroom cases, in members, defendants, and attorneys; attempting to overcome past violence, have judicial authorities created separate been deeply and profoundly violent, often entrance and exit routes for defendants’ excruciating to those who attend and supporters; and children of the disappeared participate in them. Attending trials thus staged celebrations outside courthouses on produced in me a new commitment to the the days of verdicts. In these kindnesses idea of nunca más, no more repressive and convivialities, the grind of proceedings regimes. To spare human beings the gave way to reprieves—not only from the distress of living through trials of human interpersonal tensions, but also from the rights violations as highly charged as toil of trials: sessions that began as early as Argentina’s is a reason to work to prevent 8 a.m. and ended as late as 11 p.m.; future repression. depositions from victims that left even judges and defense attorneys in tears; and I gratefully acknowledge Bob, Maud, and the closing arguments, fuguelike and lasting Ruth Cox and Tex and Jeanie Harris,
25 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3 debates
La Argentina: Un laboratorio extra-ordinario por Sévane Garibian | Universidades de Ginebra y de Neuchâtel | [email protected]
La Argentina, antigua tierra de acogida de frente a las presiones de los militares y los el otro, el carácter inconciliable de esta numerosos criminales de guerra nazis, sublevamientos de las fuerzas armadas, doble misión con la existencia de leyes de deshecho por su propio pasado dictatorial Alfonsín promulga dos leyes de amnistía,6 amnistía. Es una gran novedad: olvido que ocasionó al menos 30.000 siendo la constitucionalidad de la segunda ficticio del Estado por vía de amnistía y desaparecidos, tiene la singularidad de rápidamente confirmada en un fallo muy misión de justicia son declarados experimentar, inmediatamente después de controvertido de la Corte Suprema.7 A fundamentalmente incompatibles. la dictadura militar, la casi totalidad de los partir de diciembre de 1990, el nuevo mecanismos jurídicos conocidos en el presidente Menem firma los primeros tratamiento de violaciones masivas de los decretos de gracia y otorga el indulto a La herencia de los “juicios por la verdad” derechos humanos. En este sentido, la todos los condenados de 1985. Argentina es un extra-ordinario laboratorio Es importante recordar que, entre la en materia de lucha contra la impunidad y Hoy, la Argentina asiste a la reapertura de adopción de las leyes de amnistía de de restauración de la verdad, que da para los procesos penales tras la revolución 1986–1987 y su reciente anulación, se vio pensar tanto el papel de la justicia penal jurídica que constituyen la anulación de las en la Argentina la aparición de una acción retributiva (proceso penal clásico) y de la leyes de amnistía de 1986–1987 por el judicial alternativa y única en el mundo: el justicia penal restaurativa (“juicios por la Congreso, en 2003,8 y la declaración de su juicio por la verdad, verdadera práctica sui verdad”) en un contexto post-dictatorial, inconstitucionalidad por la Corte Suprema generis construida en reacción al bloqueo como su(s) relaciones(s). en el célebre caso Simón de 2005:9 según la de los procesos penales hasta 2003 y a la Corte, las leyes de Punto Final (1986) y de política de olvido de los años 90. En Obediencia Debida (1987) chocan respuesta de la confesión pública del ex La reapertura de los procesos penales frontalmente con el derecho internacional, capitán Adolfo Scilingo de sus crímenes pues como toda amnistía se orientan “al cometidos durante la dictadura y su Apenas accedido a la presidencia tras olvido” de graves violaciones a los derechos participación en los “vuelos de la elecciones libres luego de siete años de humanos. La Corte confirma a la vez su muerte”,11 se inician en 1995 los dos dictadura (1976–1983), Raúl Alfonsín, incompatibilidad con el orden jurídico primeros casos que dan origen a los juicios iniciador de la transición democrática, internacional, y la validez de la ley 25.779 por la verdad, ante la Cámara en lo instituye la CONADEP (o “Comisión de 2003 por la cual el Congreso de la Criminal y Correccional Federal de Buenos Sábato”)1 encargada de investigar sobre las Nación declaró insanablemente nulas las Aires (casos Mónica Mignone y Alejandra desapariciones forzadas perpetradas por el leyes en cuestión. Lapacó). El objetivo principal es el de régimen militar. El mismo año, el Congreso esquivar el bloqueo judicial operado por anula la ley de auto-amnistía previamente En realidad, es en gran parte sobre la base las leyes de amnistía; más exactamente, promulgada bajo el gobierno del general de la sentencia Barrios Altos de la Corte de proponer una conciliación entre dos Bignone en nombre de la pacificación del San José que se funda, en 2005, la decisión exigencias a priori inconciliables: por un país y de la reconciliación social2 de la Corte Suprema de la Argentina en el lado, el respeto de las amnistías previstas (anulación cuya validez constitucional la caso Simón.10 Los votos de la mayoría de por leyes adoptadas por un Estado Corte Suprema confirmará ulteriormente); 3 los jueces supremos argentinos, conforme a democrático en el marco de sus y el presidente Alfonsín autoriza los la jurisprudencia de la Corte prerrogativas soberanas, y cuya validez fue procesos penales contra los generales de las Interamericana, traducen la aceptación de en esta época confirmada por la Corte tres primeras juntas militares.4 En 1985, la un lazo indisoluble entre búsqueda de la Suprema; por el otro, el respeto del derecho CONADEP publica su célebre informe verdad y sanción penal de los criminales, en al juez, garante de la misión de justicia. Nunca Más, ofreciendo un primer el centro de las obligaciones estatales en panorama de los crímenes de la dictadura.5 materia de violaciones graves de los La estrategia de conciliación adoptada El 22 de abril de 1985 comienza en Buenos derechos humanos. La idea principal es, consiste en fundar la demanda sobre un Aires el juicio histórico a las juntas, a fin de por un lado, el carácter complementario nuevo derecho subjetivo, el derecho a la juzgar a los principales actores de la —y necesario— de las dos misiones del verdad —apenas emergente de la dictadura (pronunciación del veredicto el 9 Estado (investigar/sancionar) como jurisprudencia de la Corte de San José,12 de diciembre de 1985). En 1986 y 1987, componentes del derecho a la justicia y, por indefinido y ausente del derecho argentino.
26 A este fin los demandantes remiten al más de 2.000 desapariciones son objeto de colaboración y del “diálogo entre jueces” derecho internacional de los derechos audiencias públicas todos los miércoles.15 que parecen nacer, en estos últimos años, de humanos, cuyos principales instrumentos la coexistencia, única en su género, entre forman parte del bloque de Poco después del acuerdo concluido en juicios por la verdad y juicios penales —en constitucionalidad desde la reforma de 1999, y paralelamente al desarrollo de la particular desde el punto de vista del 1994 (artículo 75.22 de la Constitución). jurisprudencia argentina en la materia, la respeto de los derechos de los acusados? La justificación de esta tarea consiste en Corte de San José, a su turno, reconoce por Luego, sobre el plano internacional, uno decir que el derecho a la verdad permitiría primera vez expresamente el derecho a la puede preguntarse si el lazo establecido por conciliar amnistía y acceso al juez penal, verdad en el caso Bámaca Velásquez la Corte de San José entre el derecho a la dado que el mismo se sitúa en el centro de (2000),16 pero sin admitir su carácter verdad y el derecho a la justicia es un proceso judicial cuyo objeto es diferente autónomo: según los jueces inmutable, considerando la consagración al del juicio penal clásico. La función del interamericanos, se trata de un derecho convencional del derecho a la verdad como juez penal, en el marco de los denominados “subsumido” del derecho a la justicia (o sea derecho subjetivo autónomo en la juicios por la verdad, no sería la de juzgar a de las garantías judiciales y de la protección Convención Internacional para la los responsables de los crímenes, sino judicial en el sentido de los artículos 8 y 25 protección de todas las personas contra las averiguar la verdad, no como antecedente de la Convención Interamericana). La desapariciones forzadas del 20 de necesario de la pena, sino como un objeto Corte de San José confirmara su posición diciembre de 2006. en sí: aunque no le competa establecer la en la sentencia Barrios Altos citada (2001): verdad histórica, el juez podría sin embargo el derecho a la verdad es definido como el participar de su “esclarecimiento”, que pre-requisito indispensable que condiciona Notas toma una dimensión particular en estos el acceso efectivo a la justicia para las 1 Creada por decreto 187 del 15 de diciembre juicios exclusivamente destinados a la víctimas y/o sus familiares —indispensable, de 1983. aclaración, a la autentificación y a la pero no suficiente en tanto tal por la 2 Ley de facto 22.924 del 23 de marzo de 1983. designación de lo que tuvo lugar más allá realización de las garantías judiciales de las La ley que anula esta auto-amnistía, es la ley de la dialéctica binaria culpable/no que no es más que un componente. 23.040 del 22 de diciembre de 1983. culpable. 3 En la nueva configuración argentina desde Fallos 309:1689 del 30 de diciembre de 1986, “Causa originariamente instruida por el Después de múltiples pasos hacia delante y el caso Simón de 2005, la garantía del Consejo Supremo de las Fuerzas Armadas en hacia atrás —incluso una sentencia derecho a la verdad se vuelve una especie cumplimiento del decreto 158/1983 del Poder desfavorable de la Corte Suprema13 y una de antecámara de la acción penal clásica, Ejecutivo Nacional”. denuncia ante la Comisión posible de ahora en más. De hecho, la 4 Por decreto 158/83 del 13 de diciembre de Interamericana— se logra un acuerdo de anulación de las leyes de 1986–1987 y la 1983. solución amistosa (firmado el 15 de reapertura oficial de las causas penales no noviembre de 1999), a partir del cual el clausuran, sin embargo, los juicios por la 5 CONADEP, Informe de la Comisión Nacional Gobierno argentino “acepta y garantiza el verdad. Esta práctica judicial híbrida — sobre la Desaparición de Personas (Nunca Más) (1985; Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 8e ed. derecho a la verdad que consiste en el entre Comisión de verdad (reparación 2006). agotamiento de todos los medios para simbólica) y juicio penal (retribución)— no alcanzar el esclarecimiento acerca de lo sólo prosigue en La Plata paralelamente a 6 Respectivamente: ley 23.492 de Punto Final y sucedido con las personas desaparecidas”. los procesos penales nacionales, sino que ley 23.521 de Obediencia Debida. El acuerdo precisa que “es una obligación además ofrece material de investigación e 7 Fallos 310:1162 del 22 de junio de 1987, de medios, no de resultados, que se importantes testimonios, o sea un trabajo “Camps, Ramón Juan Alberto y otros”. mantiene en tanto no se alcancen los de reconstrucción de los hechos utilizado 8 Por ley 25.779 promulgada el 2 de septiembre 14 resultados, en forma imprescriptible”. para la preparación de los juicios penales. de 2003. Este acontecimiento permitirá la 9 sistematización de los juicios por la verdad Se plantean entonces dos cuestiones. Fallos 328:2056 del 14 de junio de 2005, “Simón, Julio Héctor y otros”. en Argentina, en particular ante la Cámara Primero, sobre el plano nacional, ¿cuáles Federal de La Plata, donde, desde entonces, son los contornos y los límites exactos de la
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10 Caso Barrios Altos vs. Perú. Fondo. Sentencia Garibian, Sévane del 14 de marzo de 2001. Serie C No. 75. 2012 “Derecho a la verdad. El caso argentino”. 11 Horacio Verbitsky, El vuelo (Buenos Aires: En Justicia de transición: El caso de España, Planeta, 1995). compilado por Santiago Ripol Carulla y C. Villán Durán, 51–63. Resultats de Recerca 12 Caso Velásquez Rodríguez vs. Honduras. 02/2012 (Barcelona: Institut Català Fondo. Sentencia del 29 de julio de 1988. Serie Internacional per la Pau) (accesible online: C No. 4. www.gencat.cat/icip). 13 Fallos 321:2031 del 13 de agosto de 1998, 2012 “El recurso al derecho internacional para “Suárez Mason, Carlos Guillermo”. la represión de los crímenes del pasado. Una 14 Informe no. 21/00 de la Comisión mirada cruzada sobre los casos Touvier Interamericana caso 12.059, 29 de febrero de (Francia) y Simón (Argentina)”. Revista 2000. Jurídica de la Universidad de Palermo 13 (1): 53–74. 15 Véase el sitio internet de l’Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos de La Méndez, Juan E. Plata: http://apdhlaplata.org.ar/v1/category/ juicio-por-la-verdad. 2006 “The Human Right to Truth: Lessons Learned from Latin America Experiences with 16 Caso Bámaca Velásquez vs. Guatemala. Truth Telling”. En Telling the Truth: Truth Fondo. Sentencia del 25 de noviembre de Telling and Peace Building in Post-conflict 2000. Serie C No. 70. Societies, editado por Tristan Anne Borer, 115–151 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press). Referencias
Abregú, Martín 1996 “La tutela judicial del derecho a la verdad en la Argentina”. Revista IIDH 24: 11–47. 1998 “Derecho a la verdad vs impunidad”. Revista IIDH 27: 117–119.
Bakker, Christine A. E. 2005 “A Full Stop to Amnesty in Argentina: The Simón Case”. Journal of International Criminal Justice 3 (5): 1106–1120.
Elias, J. S. 2006 “‘Simón’ O de cómo las buenas intenciones pueden socavar el Estado de Derecho”. Jurisprudencia de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, Suplemento 2006–III, Fascículo nº 13, Sección Jurisprudencia Anotada, pp. 37–72.
28 debates
Addressing the Past, Avoiding the Present, Ignoring the Future? Ongoing Human Rights Trials in Argentina by Par Engstrom | UCL Institute of the Americas | [email protected]
The recent death of the former de facto balance of power and the motivations of the fates of the disappeared has hampered president of Argentina, General Jorge ruling governments, the military, and the proceedings. Videla, highlights the long journey traveled human rights organizations, together with since the country’s period of state broader shifts in the global accountability Moreover, there is the challenge inherent in repression. The 87-year-old army general regime, unrestricted prosecution reopened the overwhelming emphasis on judicial died in a common prison, convicted of nearly 20 years after the beginning of the processes in transitional justice and the multiple crimes against humanity. The transition to democracy. legitimacy of legal approaches more former military strongman will be buried— generally. For many in Argentina, discredited and repudiated—according to Since the reopening of the trials for particularly in the period immediately legislation passed in 2009 that prohibits violations committed during the military following the transition to democracy, there funeral honors for members of the armed regime, significant prosecutorial was a strong consequentialist rationale for forces who have been involved in human momentum has developed. Although criminal prosecution of past atrocities as a rights violations. Fittingly, perhaps, the figures vary, around one thousand way to reassert the legitimacy of the state, legislation was passed under the leadership individuals are currently indicted to strengthen the rule of law, and to of the civilian minister of defense at the (procesados), and over four hundred have promote political democratization. Yet as time, Nilda Garré, herself a former target been convicted (though given the Argentine the followers of Carlos Nino have pointed of the military regime that Videla once led. legal system, the number of individuals out, the legitimacy of judicial procedures with confirmed sentences is considerably and the law more generally is based on Yet, the inglorious passing of the former lower). The sheer scale and scope of the their degree of inclusiveness and the quality leader of the Argentine military junta also ongoing trials testify to the drama of of public deliberation. While there have demonstrates that his compatriots’ efforts Argentina’s protracted political and legal been robust safeguards in place to protect at truth and justice have been far from struggles over transitional justice. And yet, defendants’ due process rights, the criminal linear. Videla was initially convicted even the passing of such a discredited figure prosecutions have not led to any discernible together with the other members of the as Videla does not dispel the very increase in the quality of public debate military junta in 1985 for multiple heinous significant shadows inherent in Argentina’s concerning Argentina’s past, and the effects crimes but was pardoned five years later by most recent approach to its past and the of the trials on human rights accountability then president Carlos Menem. In 1998, implications for contemporary concerns more generally are far from clear. however, Videla was again convicted and over both human rights and political returned to prison for his role in the accountability. Three sets of issues need There are also concerns related to the military regime’s systematic abduction of highlighting. retributive rationale that underpins the children of the disappeared, only to be trials. Here, Argentina is not an isolated moved to house arrest shortly thereafter. It First, there are the inherent challenges of island. The principle of individual criminal was not until 2006 that then president the trials themselves. In its recently accountability has become deeply Néstor Kirchner ordered the old general published annual report, the Centro de embedded in global transitional justice transferred to a military base; this was Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), one of policy and practice. This is in contrast to followed by a series of convictions in the key Argentine human rights the more collective notions of separate trials that eventually led Videla to organizations driving the trials forward, accountability—political or regime serve out his life sentences in the civilian laments the many administrative and accountability—that shaped debates on prison where he died. procedural delays and shortcomings of the transitional justice in the early transitional ongoing trial proceedings. Progress has period. The enmeshment between As Gabriel Pereira and I have argued been slow, adding to the frustrations of international criminal law and justice has, elsewhere, Argentina has gone through an some that justice delayed is justice denied. in other words, both criminalized and ebb and flow process in which the initial Significant judicial and administrative individualized accountability debates in opening to judicial accountability following resources have been devoted, but the transitional justice. The significant the transition to democracy was gradually refusal of many of the indicted (including limitations of retributionist approaches to restricted and eventually foreclosed. Videla) to accept the legitimacy of the trials criminal justice, especially in response to However, due to gradual shifts in the and cooperate by providing information on large-scale organized political violence, are
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rarely acknowledged in Argentina. Simply human rights violations. In light of human rights discourse around pressing given the vast number of cases in such problems ranging from rampant police contemporary challenges. contexts, attempts to establish individual violence to enduring discrimination against criminal responsibility tend ultimately to be indigenous communities, the morally This matters, because the politics of human unsatisfactory. To focus on a handful of compelling question should be: how can rights accountability in Argentina has cases may invite accusations of selectivity the continuing pursuit of accountability for tended to revolve around more narrow and further contribute to the politicization crimes committed 30 years ago shape and concerns about accountability for of the judicial system. To pursue contribute to the transformation of the very historically defined past abuses, rather than maximalist prosecutorial strategies may structures that gave rise to the violations in around broader accountability in cause an already slow and inefficient the first place? To be fair, little is Argentina’s inevitably—and not uniquely— judiciary to grind to a halt, undermining understood about the transformative flawed democracy. This matters as well the rule of law. potential of transitional justice. For because the pursuit of accountability does researchers, there are inherent difficulties in not necessarily lead to improvements in True, the trials in Argentina indicate measuring accountability developments democracy and human rights. Clearly, the gradual yet significant changes in judicial because of the variety of measures used, trials matter for the many victims of thinking with regard to international and difficulties in assessing what the actual abuses. But what is their broader impact, human rights law and the jurisprudence of impacts are on broader measures of and how can broader public support be the inter-American human rights system in democracy and human rights. But even on generated, when they have become viewed, particular. Like judiciaries elsewhere, the the conceptual level, there is still a in some quarters, as a set of special Argentine judiciary is attuned to and significant gap between the terms of interests, or, perhaps even worse, with generally accommodates political shifts. accountability debates in the transitional indifference? There are also considerable The law, however, and the interests and justice literature, on the one hand, and in accountability deficits in Argentina that are normative preferences of its practitioners, the democratization literature on various quite unrelated to the extent to which cannot be simply reduced to politics. Yet, forms of political accountability, on the accountability for past human rights crimes influences external to the judiciary— other. are achieved. Yes, accountability for its past including the Kirchner governments and is vital for any society, but so is present human rights organizations—are clearly Activists’ contributions to broader human accountability. important when accounting for these rights issues, beyond the sometimes narrow judicial changes. And while successive confines of truth and justice concerning This leads me to the final and concluding Argentine governments have acknowledged past atrocities under the military regime, cluster of concerns that, in some ways, special international obligations that limit have been, with some notable exceptions, underpin much of this discussion: the scope of political discretion and the limited. Fairly few Argentine human rights contemporary Argentine politics, which has autonomy of domestic laws in human organizations have been able to make the become centered on heated debates around rights matters, the Cristina Fernández de transition to human rights advocacy in a the character of Kirchnerismo. Since the Kirchner government appeared to signal a deeply unequal and problematic but still election of Néstor Kirchner in 2003, the reversal recently by failing to support the democratic society. The intimate question of accountability for past human Inter-American Commission on Human association in the minds of significant rights abuses has been given a prominent Rights against retrograde attempts to sectors of the population between human position on the government agenda. restructure the regional human rights body. rights and abuses by military regimes has Together with the significant weakening of limited the advocacy agenda to abuses of the military as a political actor, the support Second, the trials raise questions the past, although for many sectors of of successive Kirchner governments has concerning the depth of political society the widespread abuses of the been crucial in precipitating the most recent democratization in Argentina. As is widely present constitute a more pressing concern. shift in Argentina’s path to accountability. documented, the pursuit of accountability The association of the vocabulary of True, without the persistence and creativity for past human rights violations in human rights with military abuses of the of Argentina’s highly mobilized human Argentina continues to coexist with very past has made it difficult to mobilize the rights organizations, these developments persistent impunity for other types of would have been unlikely. At the same
30 time, although civil society initiatives are contentious coexistence, to borrow Leigh clearly important, they cannot replace state Payne’s phrase, of opposing and competing action. In the aftermath of mass atrocity, views about the past may indeed be what public institutions have a responsibility to can be reasonably wished for. Moreover, ensure reparations, compensation, and delayed justice offers no magic solution to restitution to victims. These are deep-seated problems of impunity. responsibilities and functions—both However, there is a pressing and quite material and symbolic—that state urgent need in Argentina—and elsewhere— institutions are uniquely placed to fulfil in to connect the past with the present as a order to foster a continuing state policy way of imagining the future. This, I hope, with broad support across political divides. is not merely a rather nice turn of phrase but a way to prevent a focus on past crimes However, arguably there is now a real risk from pushing concerns regarding the that the politicization of human rights present and future consequences of the discourse and practice in Argentina is pursuit of accountability to the margins of reaching a tipping point. For some time it debates. It is not about an either/or has been pointed out that the Kirchner approach, as indeed, the past and present government’s focus on the crimes of the are inexorably linked. But addressing the past has allowed it to avoid dealing with past at the expense of the present and the current human rights problems. Moreover, future tends to be politically expedient for the strong political association between the an incumbent government. Invariably, this Madres de Plaza de Mayo and comes at a heavy price for society as a Kirchnerismo may have been mutually whole. beneficial, in addition to its instrumental role in advancing the trials. But with the moral leadership of the Madres in doubt as a consequence of the controversies surrounding the Schoklender corruption case, and the Cristina Fernández government facing increasingly vocal accusations of corruption, their respective political opponents have gained leverage in their attempts to portray the trials as a partisan attempt at “victors’ justice.” Indeed, supporters of the military regime have sought to appropriate the language of accountability, with the government as their target, to oppose the trials, and perpetrators have sought to portray themselves as victims of government persecution.
This political manipulation of the trials may have been inevitable. Thirty years have passed since Argentina returned to democratic rule, but a basic consensus on transitional justice remains elusive. A
31 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3 on lasa2014
Chicago! Chicago! Looking Ahead to LASA2014 by Raúl Madrid | University of Texas at Austin | [email protected] and Florencia Garramuño | Universidad de San Andrés | [email protected]
LASA in 2014 will return to the city that institutions designed to prevent future course, LASA2014 will also examine a Carl Sandburg described a century earlier governments from holding them fantastic variety of other topics. Indeed, it in a famous poem as “Stormy, husky, accountable. is the broad diversity of the panels, events, brawling.” “City of the big shoulders,” the and workshops offered at LASA that make name that Sandburg gave to this blue- Some individuals and countries have it the truly great conference that it is. collar, industrial, and agricultural hub, pushed to bury this past or have tried to came to seem appropriate given the defend it, while others have sought to learn Track chairs have already been chosen for reputation the city acquired for tough from it and to make amends. Some have LASA2014; we thank of all you who gangsters (Al Capone) and even tougher sought to preserve the inherited laws and agreed to serve in this position. The track sport teams (Da Bears). Chicago’s institutions, while others have sought to chairs will have the difficult task of sorting toughness was exemplified by Sean reform or dismantle them. Central to these through and ranking hundreds of papers Connery’s line in the gangster film The disputes are conflicting memories of the and panel proposals. We selected our track Untouchables: “If they put one of ours in past. The different sides have disagreed chairs with an eye toward achieving a the hospital, we put ten of theirs in the fundamentally about who did what to diversity of views, approaches, and morgue—that’s how it’s done in Chicago” whom as well as why they did it. backgrounds, and together we will work to (or as a Chilean might put it: “a chanchada: Democracies in Latin America thus have ensure that this diversity is reflected in the chanchada y media”). Over time, however, been concerned not just with looking papers and panels. Chicago acquired other reputations and forward, but also with looking back. nicknames as city leaders worked to clean As in past years, we encourage LASA up the city’s image. Some dubbed it the LASA2014 will explore these issues in members to submit panel proposals, rather Jewel of the Midwest or Paris on the Prairie depth. We will ask how memories have than individual paper proposals, whenever for its classical architecture, wide been shaped and interpreted and how these possible. Panel proposals will have a better boulevards, and beautiful parks. Others memories have molded the institutions and chance of being accepted, and the panels called it the Windy City, the Big Onion, or policies that countries have adopted since that are organized by our members tend to “that toddlin’ town.” Former mayor the return to democracy. We will examine have greater coherence than the panels we Richard J. Daley dubbed Chicago “the City how experiences with violence and assemble from individual paper proposals. that Works” to celebrate its legendary contemporary conflicts are dealt with. We efficiency, which was, not coincidentally, will probe how these experiences and Proposals for LASA2014 are due overseen by his political machine. memories have shaped public opinion and September 3, 2013. Proposal forms and political commitments, and how these instructions can be found on the LASA Latin America has witnessed similar opinions and commitments have been website. See the “Call for Papers” in this struggles over how to characterize the reflected in public policies. We will explore issue of the LASA Forum for further region and interpret its past. These how collective memories have endured and information and a list of the program struggles will be the subject of inquiry at been passed onto younger generations that tracks and track chairs. LASA2014, the theme of which is have no personal experience of “Democracy and Memory.” More than 30 authoritarian rule. We will analyze how LASA2014 will be held from May 21 to years after the return to democracy, it is individuals and institutions, from writers 24, 2014, in the historic Palmer House time to examine Latin America as a site of and artists to museums and schools, have Hilton in Chicago. The Palmer House, also cultural, political, and social debate over sought to represent and commemorate the the site of LASA1998, was built in 1873 memories of dictatorship and democracy. past. Finally, we will discuss how current and is located blocks from Chicago’s and future generations can learn from the Magnificent Mile shopping district, the Since the return to democracy in the region, past and encourage open and sustained theater district, and Millennium Park. Latin American countries have struggled to discussion about it. Chicago is well known for its terrific deal with the legacies of authoritarian rule. museums, parks, restaurants, and The authoritarian regimes that ruled the LASA2014 will hold a variety of panels, nightclubs, many of which are also in region until the 1980s committed events, and workshops dealing with these walking distance of the conference hotel. widespread human rights violations and themes and, as program co-chairs, we Please join us in May 2014 in the City of repressed civil and political liberties. They welcome all suggestions about this or other the Big Shoulders! also created a variety of laws and political aspects of the conference program. Of
32 LASA2014 – XXXii internAtionAL CongreSS ChiCAgo, iL / MAy 21 – 24, 2014 Call for Papers
Democracy & Memory
September 11, 2013, marks the fortieth anniversary of • Does this past, shaped by collective memories that the violent coup that toppled a long-existing democratic are themselves constructed of narratives, shared regime in Chile. this country was not alone in experiences, and interpretations of everyday life, as well experiencing repressive military rule. indeed, during the as of violence, repression, and resistance, affect how 1960s and 1970s, democracies in Argentina, Uruguay, new institutions are discussed, devised, and developed? and Brazil were replaced by military governments. Moreover, during the same period, and extending to the • Does the collective experience of violence and 1990s, authoritarian regimes held power in numerous oppression contribute significantly to collective other countries — Mexico, guatemala, el Salvador, commitment to “new rules of the game” that are Panama, Peru, and Paraguay among them. expected to result in widespread political participation, peaceful conflict resolution, and the generation of Many of these authoritarian regimes made systematic consensus about broad lines of public policy? use of violence, repression, disappearances, and fear to suppress resistance, protest, and human rights. they • What are the enduring tensions and conflicts that result targeted enemies of the state broadly and used exile, from collective memories of political pasts? torture, and executions as instruments of state power. • how have conflicting views of the past shaped public resistance to state repression was also widespread. recognition of historical events through art, museums, Beginning in the 1980s, democratic processes of public spaces, and school curricula? government were reestablished throughout Latin • how do collective memories survive and how are America and new constitutions were written and they transmitted across generations? introduced against a backdrop of public memories of past political experiences of repression and injustice, • What is the obligation of current and future many of them constructed under years of authoritarian generations to honor past struggles and to engage rule. Sufficient time has now passed for scholars to in conflicts and discussions about differing assess the longer term consequences of collective interpretations of the past? memory and institutional development and to reflect on a number of major questions:
merilee Grindle raúl madrid Florencia Garramuño Harvard University University of Texas/Austin Universidad de San Andrés
L A SA P r e S i D e n t P ro g r AM C o - C h A i r P ro g r AM C o - C h A i r
The deadline To submiT proposals is sepTember 3, 2013 see next page for instructions. you are invited to submit a paper or proGram Tracks and commiTTee members panel proposal addressing either the Select the most appropriate track for your proposal from the following list and enter it in Congress theme or any topics related the designated place on the form. names of Program Committee members are provided for to the program tracks. LASA also information only. Direct your correspondence to the LASA Secretariat onLy. invites requests for travel grants from proposers residing in Latin Afro-Latin/Indigenous Peoples International Relations America or the Caribbean as well Tony Lucero, U Washington (Jackson School) Gregory Weeks, U North Carolina–Charlotte Maria Elena Garcia, U Washington as from students. Visit the LASA Labor Relations and Class Relations website for eligibility criteria. Agrarian and Rural Life Viviana Patroni, York U Krister Andersson, U Colorado, Boulder All proposals for papers, panels, Anthony Bebbington, Clark University Latino(as) in the United States and Canada and travel grants must be submitted Alejandra Vazquez, Princeton Biodiversity, Nat. Res., Environment Lázaro Lima, U Richmond electronically to the LASA Denise Humphries, Clark University Secretariat via the online proposal Law, Jurisprudence and Society Children, Youth, and Cultures Jeffrey Staton, Emory U system by september 3, 2013. Donna DeCesare, UT-Austin Literary Studies: Colonial and 19th Century Cities, Planning, and Social Services Agnes Lugo Ortiz, U Chicago The deadline to Sergio Montero, UC Berkeley Pablo Ansolabehere, Universidad de San Andrés Citizenship, Rights, and Justice Literary Studies: Contemporary submit proposals is Rodrigo Nunes, St. Edwards U Hector Hoyos, Stanford Karl Posso, Manchester Civil Society and Social Movements september 3, 2013. Amy Risley, Rhodes College Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Approaches Sybil Rhodes, Universidad del CEMA Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia, U Maryland Italo Moriconi, UFRJ Proposal forms and instructions will Culture, Power, and Political Subjectivities Fermìn Rodríguez, CONICET Mass Media and Popular Culture be available on the LASA website: Gabriel Giorgi, NYU Sallie Hughes, U Miami http://lasa.international.pitt.edu. Defense, Violence, and (In)security Migration and Latin American Diasporas Guillermo Trejo, Notre Dame Clarisa Pérez Armendáriz, Bates College no submissions by regular mail Harold Trinkunas, Naval Postgraduate School Katrina Burgess, Tufts (Fletcher School) will be accepted. the Secretariat Democratization Performance, Art and Architecture: will send confirmation of the receipt Katsuo Nishikawa, Trinity U Critical and Historical Perspectives of the proposal via e-mail. Eduardo Dargent, PUCP (Lima) Alessandra Russo, Columbia Economics and Development Political Institutions and Processes All participants will be required to Juan Camilo Cárdenas, Uniandes, Colombia Rossana Castiglioni, Universidad Diego Portales pre-register for the Congress. Juan Carlos Moreno Brid, ECLAC, Mexico Carlos Gervasoni, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Education, Pedagogy, Educatonal Policy Politics and Public Policy Jason Beech, Universidad de San Andrés Brian Wampler, Boise State U Marcelo Caruso, Humboldt U Candelaria Garay, Harvard (Kennedy School)
Film Studies Religion and Spirituality Gonzalo Aguilar, UBA Virginia Burnett, UT-Austin Ivana Bentes, UFRJ Sexualities and LGBT Studies Gender Studies José Quiroga, Emory U Christina Ewig, U Wisconsin Mercedes Prieto, FLACSO-Ecuador States, Markets, and Political Economy Natasha Sugiyama, U Wisconsin-Milwaukee Health, Medicine, and Body Politics Kate Centellas, U Mississippi Transnationalism and Globalization Elizabeth Aranda, U South Florida History and Historiographies/Historical Processes Brian Owensby, U Virginia
Human Rights and Memories Marcos Novaro, UBA LASA2014 RESERVATION FORM
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FULL EXHIBIT SPACE (10’ x 8’) ☐ $885 Commercial/ University Press ☐ $785 each additional commercial ☐ $755 Charitable Organization ☐ $655 each additional charitable ☐ $450 + $80 (sharing fee) Booth Share ($530 total) Total # of Booths: ☐one ☐two ☐three ☐four ☐five
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As the authorized contact for the above organization, I agree Return form to: to comply with, and be bound by, the terms of LASA’s Rules LASA Book Exhibit and Regulations. 416 Bellefield Hall University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260. Printed Name: Telephone: 412-648-7929 Fax: 412-624-7145 Signature: Email: [email protected] / [email protected]
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FILM FESTIVAL LASA2014 XXXII INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION Democracy & Memory
May 21 - 24, 2014 – Chicago, IL, USA
Claudia Ferman, Director
You may submit a film or video (not integrated into a panel, workshop, or other regular Congress session) for selection to participate in the LASA Film Festival. Selection criteria are: artistic, technical, and cinematographic excellence; uniqueness of contribution to the visual presentation of materials on Latin America; and relevance to disciplinary, geographic, and thematic interests of LASA members, as evidenced by topics proposed for panels, workshops, and special sessions at recent Congresses.
These films and videos will be screened free of charge in the LASA2014 Film Festival, and compete for the juried designation of LASA2014 Award of Merit in Film, which is given for “excellence in the visual presentation of educational and artistic materials on Latin America.”
Films and videos released after January 2013 and those that premiere at the LASA Congress will be given special consideration, if they also meet the above criteria. LASA membership is not required to compete.
Films must be received no earlier than November 1, 2013, and no later than February 1, 2014. Selection will be announced by April 15, 2014. Entries constitute acceptance of the rules and regulations of the LASA Film Festival. Film screeners will not be returned and will be deposited in the festival archives.
LASA2014 FILM FESTIVAL SUBMISSION FORM Submissions for the Film Festival will be received only from November 1, 2013 through February 1, 2014.
Film title (original title, and published translations)
Director Brief description of subject matter, including countries or areas Producer treated (or attach descriptive brochure) Year of Release Country Running Time Language/s Subtitles Original Format
Distributor
Phone / Fax
Address
Your Name Affiliation Email Phone / Fax Address
To enter the competition for the LASA2014 Film Festival: Mail the completed submission form, along with a DVD copy of your film to the Festival director. Submissions are encouraged to be mailed through express services (i.e., UPS, DHL, FedEx). Please, keep your tracking number to guarantee delivery. Films without a submission form will not be considered. Claudia Ferman / Director, LASA2014 Film Festival University of Richmond – 28 Westhampton Way – LAIS – CWIC 334 -- Richmond VA 23173 – USA Email: [email protected] lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3 calling all members Nominations Invited
Nominations Invited for 2013 Slate Kalman Silvert Award Bryce Wood Book Award Call for Nominations Call for Nominations Deadline: September 3, 2013 Deadline: September 7, 2013 Deadline: September 7, 2013 LASA members are invited to suggest nominees for vice president and three The Kalman Silvert Award Committee At each International Congress, the Latin members of the Executive Council, for invites nominations of candidates for the American Studies Association presents the terms beginning June 1, 2014. Criteria for year 2014 award. The Silvert Award Bryce Wood Book Award to the nomination include professional credentials recognizes senior members of the outstanding book on Latin America in the and previous service to LASA. Each profession who have made distinguished social sciences and humanities published in candidate must have been a member of the lifetime contributions to the study of Latin English. Eligible books for the 2014 LASA Association in good standing for at least America. The award is given at each LASA International Congress will be those one year prior to nomination. Biographic International Congress. Past recipients of published between July 1, 2012, and June data and the rationale for nomination must the award were: John J. Johnson (1983); 30, 2013. Although no book may compete be sent by September 3, 2013, to LASA Federico Gil (1985); Albert O. Hirschman more than once, translations may be Executive Director Milagros Pereyra-Rojas (1986); Charles Wagley (1988); Lewis considered. Anthologies of selections by
37 37 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3
Members of the 2014 committee are: or USPS: Premio Iberoamericano Book Award Bryan McCann Call for Nominations Kurt Weyland (chair) Georgetown University 4126 Batts H History Dept Deadline: September 7, 2013 1 University Station A1800 Box 571035 Austin, TX 78712 Washington DC, 20057 The Premio Iberoamericano is presented at USA USA each of LASA’s International Congresses for the outstanding book on Latin America in César A Braga-Pinto Eva-Lynn Jagoe the social sciences and humanities Department of Spanish and Portuguese Comparative Literature published in Spanish or Portuguese in any Northwestern University 93 Charles St., 3rd floor country. Eligible books for the 2014 award Crowe 2-163 University of Toronto must have been published between July 1, 1860 Campus Dr. Toronto, ON M5S 1K9 2012, and June 30, 2013. No book may Evanston, IL 60208 CANADA compete more than once. Normally not in USA contention for the award are anthologies of Mark Overmyer-Velázquez selections by several authors or reprints or Natalia Brizuela El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, re-editions of works published previously. Department of Spanish & Portuguese Caribbean and Latin American Studies Books will be judged on the quality of the 5319 Dwinelle Hall University of Connecticut research, analysis, and writing, and the University of California, Berkeley Ryan Building, 2nd floor significance of their contribution to Latin Berkeley, CA 94720-2590 2006 Hillside Road, Unit 1161 American studies. Books may be USA Storrs, CT 06269-1161 nominated by authors, LASA members, or USA publishers. Individuals who nominate Ana Lucia Araujo books are responsible for confirming the Department of History publication date and for forwarding one Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall copy directly to each member of the award 2441 6th Street N.W., Room 316B Latin American Studies Association committee, at the expense of those Washington, DC 20059 Attn: Bryce Wood Book Award submitting the books. USA Nominations University of Pittsburgh All books must reach each member of the Rachel Sarah O’Toole 315 South Bellefield Avenue committee by September 7, 2013. LASA Department of History 416 Bellefield Hall membership is not a requirement for University of California, Irvine Pittsburgh, PA 15260 receiving the award. The award will be 200 Krieger Hall USA announced at the 2014 Welcoming Irvine, CA 92697-3275 Reception, and the awardee will be publicly USA honored.
Bryan McCann Members of the 2014 committee are: Georgetown University History Department Gerardo Luis Munck (chair) ICC 601 Univ. of Southern California 3700 O St, NW School of International Relations Washington DC 20057 3518 Trousdale Parkway VKC 330 Los Angeles, CA 90089-0043 USA
38 38 Sol Serrano LASA Media Award Members of the Media Award committee Las Hualtatas 4717, Vitacura Call for Nominations are Cecilia Alvear (chair), independent Código postal 7630000 multimedia journalist; June Carolyn Erlick, Santiago Deadline: September 7, 2013 David Rockefeller Center for Latin CHILE American Studies, Harvard University; Elio The Latin American Studies Association is Gaspari, journalist and writer; Alfredo Soledad Loaeza Tovar pleased to announce its competition for the Corchado, Dallas Morning News; Maria El Colegio de México year 2014 LASA Media Awards for Teresa Ronderos, Semana.com; and Camino al Ajusco 20 outstanding media coverage of Latin Carolyn Curiel, Purdue University. Pedregal de Santa Teresa America. These awards are made at every México, DF 10740 LASA Congress to recognize long-term MEXICO journalistic contributions to analysis and public debate about Latin America in the United States and in Latin America, as well as breakthrough journalism. Nominations Latin American Studies Association are invited from LASA members and from Attn: Premio Iberoamericano Book Award journalists. Journalists from both the print Nominations and electronic media are eligible. The University of Pittsburgh committee will carefully review each 315 South Bellefield Avenue nominee’s work and select an award 416 Bellefield Hall recipient. The award will be announced at Pittsburgh, PA 15260 the LASA2014 Welcoming Reception, and USA the awardee will be publicly honored. LASA may invite the awardee to submit materials for possible publication in the LASA Forum. Recent recipients of the awards include: Marcela Turati, Periodistas de a Pie (2013), José Vales, El Universal de Mexico (2012); Carlos Dada, El Faro (2010); Mario Osava, América Latina Inter Press Service (2009); Hollman Morris, Colombia (2007); Maria Ester Gilio (2006); Julio Scherer, journalist, Mexico (2004); Eduardo Anguita, freelance journalist, Buenos Aires (2003); Guillermo González Uribe, Número, Bogotá (2001); Patricia Verdugo Aguirre, Conama, Chile, and Diario 16, Spain (2000); Gustavo Gorriti, Caretas, Lima, Peru (1998).
To make a nomination, please send one copy of the journalist’s portfolio of recent relevant work to LASA Executive Director Milagros Pereyra-Rojas
39 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3
LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin William LeoGrande, American University, LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Memorial Lectureship 2006; Orlando Fals Borda, 2007; Terry Dissertation Award Call for Nominations Karl, Stanford University, 2009; Carlos Ivan Degregori, Instituto de Estudios Application deadline: September 7, 2013 Deadline: September 7, 2013 Peruanos, 2010; Claudia Paz y Paz, Instituto de Estudios Comparados y The Martin Diskin Dissertation Award is The Martin Diskin Memorial Lectureship Ciencias Penales, 2012; and Stefano Varese, made possible through the generosity of is offered at each LASA International University of California, Davis, 2013. Oxfam America, LASA, and LASA Congress to an outstanding individual who members. This award is offered at each combines commitments to activism and Nominations, including self-nominations, LASA International Congress to an scholarship. This distinguished lectureship are welcome. A nomination should include outstanding advanced junior scholar who is made possible largely by a generous a statement justifying the nomination, the embodies Professor Diskin’s commitment contribution from Oxfam America, an complete mailing address of the nominee, to the creative combination of activism and organization committed to grassroots telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail scholarship. The award will be presented work, and one with which Martin Diskin address. To nominate a candidate, send to an advanced doctoral student or recent was closely associated. these materials no later than September 7, PhD. Advanced PhD candidates pursuing 2013, to LASA Executive Director this award must demonstrate that they will Past Lecturers were Ricardo Falla, S.J., Milagros Pereyra-Rojas
Proposed Changes to the LASA Bylaws Article 7 (second paragraph, lines 5–8)
On August 2, 2013, the Executive Council approved the following proposed change in the Bylaws of the Association:
Amendments to resolutions may be presented at the LASA Business Meeting, and if accepted as a friendly amendment by a duly empowered person present at the meeting, the resolution as amended will be sent out for a vote to the membership. If not accepted, the resolution will be sent out for a vote in the form presented to the Business Meeting.
Amendments proposed by the Executive Council go into effect 90 days after the LASA membership is notified provided that no more than 100 persons object in writing to the Executive Director within the interim period. Objections can be directed to LASA Executive Director, LASA, 416 Bellefield Hall, University of Pittsburgh, PITTSBURGH PA 15260. E‑mail
40 the quality of the dissertation writing, Charles A. Hale Fellowship for Mexican Luciano Tomassini Latin American research, and analysis as determined by the History International Relations Book Award dissertation outline and sample chapter Call for Nominations Call for Nominations submitted; (3) the primary advisor’s letter of recommendation. The definition of Deadline: September 7, 2013 Deadline: September 7, 2013 activist scholarship shall remain broad and pluralist, to be discussed and interpreted by This fellowship will reward excellence in The Latin American Studies Association each selection committee. historical research on Mexico at the presents the Luciano Tomassini Latin dissertation level. It will be awarded at American International Relations Book Applicants should submit a current each LASA International Congress to a Award to the author(s) of an outstanding curriculum vitae; a dissertation abstract of Mexican graduate student in the final phase book on Latin American foreign policies 250 words; the dissertation outline or table of his or her doctoral research in Mexican and international relations published in of contents; one sample chapter, which history, broadly defined. Selection will be English, Spanish, or Portuguese in any exemplifies the author’s approach to based on the scholarly merit and on the country. Books eligible for the 2014 award activist scholarship; and a letter of candidate’s potential contribution to the must have been published between July 1, recommendation from the candidate’s advancement of humanist understanding 2012, and June 30, 2013. Anthologies of primary advisor that focuses explicitly on between Mexico and its global neighbors. selections by several authors are not the candidate’s qualifications for the eligible. Books will be judged on the Martin Diskin Dissertation Award. Members of the 2014 selection committee originality of the research, the quality of are Javier Garciadiego (chair), El Colegio the analysis and writing, and the All application materials must be submitted de México; Halbert Jones, Oxford significance of their contribution to the electronically to LASA Executive Director University; Sergio Silva Castañeda, Instituto study of Latin America and the Caribbean. Milagros Pereyra-Rojas
41 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3
lasa’s 50th anniversary
Kalman Silvert and LASA’s 50th Anniversary
by Martin Weinstein | Professor Emeritus, William Paterson University | [email protected]
Members of the 2014 committee are: The 50th anniversary of LASA is an appropriate time to recall Kalman Silvert’s Monica Herz extraordinary life and contributions to R. Marquês de São Vicente, Latin American studies. Silvert served as 225 - Gávea, LASA’s first president; was the program Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 22451-900, advisor for the social sciences in Latin BRAZIL America at the Ford Foundation from 1967 until his untimely death in 1976; and was Rut Diamint teacher, mentor, and institution builder at Universidad Torcuato di Tella universities in the United States and Latin Miñones 2177 America. During the darkest days in Latin C1428ATG America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Buenos Aires accompanied by the tumult and ARGENTINA constitutional crisis in the United States, he turned his energy, intellect, and his Francisco Monaldi institutional position to saving lives and IESA institutions in Latin America, and Avenida IESA defending democracy and strengthening San Bernardino democratic theory and practice throughout Caracas 1010 the Americas. VENEZUELA Abe Lowenthal and I have been coordinating a project on Kal’s many roles and contributions. We invite you to read Latin American Studies Association the following interviews conducted by Peter Attn: Luciano Tomassini Book Award Cleaves with his fellow Dartmouth alumni University of Pittsburgh concerning Kal Silvert and the influence he 315 South Bellefield Avenue had on them personally and professionally. 416 Bellefield Hall If the spirit moves you, send some thoughts Pittsburgh, PA 15260 or reminiscences of your own to the email USA above. All of the material will be published on the LASA website in the 50th year.
42 lasa’s 50th anniversary
Silvert Reminiscences Project: Students at Dartmouth College
From 1962 to 1966, Kalman Silvert taught international affairs were not as for choice.” Also, “Development is Latin American politics and methodology intellectually rigorous as Silvert. He asymmetrical.” Other scholars said a at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New created my interest in Latin America, country was either wholly developed or Hampshire. He had an enormous influence beginning with Uruguay. My recollection is undeveloped. Silvert’s approach was on a large number of undergraduate that Silvert pointed out that development multidisciplinary. He said a society could students. Some of them have written was more complicated that people might be developed in some aspects and separate reminiscences of their times with think. He asked, “What are the cultural underdeveloped in others. Humans are any him. This article includes interviews with conditions for modernization?” This is a country’s principal resource for six Dartmouth students, all of whom question that is still being asked today. development and economic resources. describe how he changed their lives. Unleashing their potential was the key to When I again read “Discussion at Bellagio,” development. One of Kalman Silvert’s courses was on I find he was asking all the right questions Latin American governments and politics. about development. The things he wrote I thought Silvert was a God at the time. At The course catalog described it as “an about are still very relevant today. He all the other universities I attended, when analysis of the contemporary distribution talked about freedom and development, professors and students spoke of other of political power and the major and nationalism as a social value. His scholars, I always quoted Kalman Silvert. government forms in Latin America. definition of the “state as the impersonal Special attention will be paid to the arbiter of human affairs” has stuck in my PC: What might you recall from his ethics, political aspects of economic and social mind. The state helps create an integrated values, or philosophy? development, the influence of ideology on country, freeing people from the bonds that public policy, and the role of relevant constrain human development. All through JC: In my 40-year career, dealing with interest groups.” He also taught seminars my career, I have seen this element missing democratic and authoritarian governments, on political modernization and in national leaders. In the years since we I found that Silvert’s precepts were correct. methodology. were in college, it became increasingly If the former elites chose not to give choices common for analysts to point out that to the masses, like in Venezuela, you get a These interviews were conducted by Peter economic growth requires rule of law. As dictator like Hugo Chávez. Silvert was a Cleaves in August and September 2012. an academic, Silvert was pointing this out humanist who believed that human The interview date appears below each well before others, stressing the relationship freedom and a state that provides unity former student’s name. Short bios of the between human freedom and democracy beyond class and family gives a society its participants are included at the end of the for development. best prospects to develop. article. Back in the 1960s, modernization theorists In identifying nationalism with the state as thought they were like social engineers— the ultimate arbiter of human affairs, I James C. Cason Interview how to guide countries to democracy. believe Silvert was referring to countries September 22, 2012 Silvert was grappling with what values like Guatemala. These societies are divided ruling elites were willing to give up to by ethnic, religious, and language cleavages PC: What do you remember most from achieve this goal. He considered that elites and dominated by powerful classes. The Kal’s teachings? either lead—or do not lead—a country state as the impersonal arbiter could bridge toward development, and described what these differences. The concept of the state JC: Kal helped cement my interest in happened in England and India. Neither of was that we all are part of a common international affairs and Latin America. At these country’s elites was willing to extend collectivity. If the country does not have an the time there were very few academics opportunities to the masses. The people open system allowing everyone to develop writing on Latin America. I always had to fight for it. his talents and share in the fruits of thought his approach was the best, development, it will not progress. East or compared to other academics like historian The key to development is to allow the West, it was the same process. Elites have Tannenbaum’s “Ten Keys to Latin human potential to blossom. One of his to be forced to give up political power. In America.” Other professors on sayings was “Freedom equals opportunities the 1960s this was true in Latin America
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and during the civil rights movement in the I worked in Uruguay, Venezuela, Portugal, I remember Grenadians throwing their United States, and we see the same today. Honduras, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Panama. arms around me saying the U.S. saved them I asked the question, “Who owns this from communism. I worked against thugs PC: How would you describe him, in one country?” If it was run by family firms who like Noriega. I was always interested in or two phrases? controlled the executive, the legislature, the going the extra mile and taking risks. The judiciary, and the economy, it was not Uruguayan military threw me out of the JC: Ahead of his time. Profound humanist. nationalistic. They were using their power country when I tried to arrange a prisoner Firm believer that freedom is a to promote their own interests. All this swap between Russian dissidents and precondition for modernization. was a subset of what Kalman Silvert was Tupamaros. As a young person I was saying. These were not all fair and inculcated with a sense of duty and PC: Can you describe any times when you impartial countries. responsibility. I joined these values with thought of him in guiding your career? many of Silvert’s teachings to guide In the embassies’ political sections, I was decisions made during my whole career. JC: Silvert got me interested in Latin always frustrated with the typical America. My diplomatic career spanned impressionistic reporting. In contrast, I PC: If you were to think of the ten persons nearly 40 years, mainly in Latin America. started with the data. For example, in most who inspired you as a young professional, Uruguay fascinated me. Batlle y Ordóñez countries where I worked I researched who would Professor Silvert be on the list? was a president who increased choices for owned the top 500–10,000 companies, the people and integrated them under building databases and family trees of the JC: Kalman Silvert would certainly be on nationalism. My thesis research in owners to ascertain just who “owned” the the list. Winston Churchill would be at the Uruguay was on why people became country. In Uruguay, I tried to figure out top. While a pupil in French Morocco, I communists. Why was it that you had a why people voted socialist or communist. I read Churchill’s collective works. Communist Party in a middle-class country read every issue of the Communist Party Afterwards I never doubted that I would like Uruguay? I was grateful that he sent newspaper over 30 years. I researched become a diplomat. Others on the list me in that direction. electricity consumption by neighborhood would be Truman and Roosevelt. Silvert and how each city block voted in past would be number four or five. I can’t think He believed that people everywhere were elections. It turned out that the of any other professor who had such an basically the same. If they had freedom of communists were the only one defending influence on me. Silvert steered me in a choice and rule of law, they could become the meatpackers. Decades later, the direction that became my life’s work. modern. I always thought it important that document I wrote with biographies, family society’s fortunate people should share trees, and networks in Panama is still being their wealth. He got me interested in used. I think Kal would have approved my Peter S. Cleaves human rights, and I defended them approach to go from empirical data to August 21, 2012 wherever I worked—whether in countries conclusions substantiated with evidence. run by rightwing dictators like Uruguay or I remember Kal’s rendition of the Parson by the left in Cuba. PC: Were there any times you remember Pattern Variables to distinguish between thinking of him when making important modern and traditional behavior. It went In my diplomatic career, I always picked decisions or ethical judgments? something like this: Modern values were difficult countries to go to. I focused on change oriented, relativistic, rational, and helping those individuals trying to create a JC: We went to Dartmouth College as universal. Contrasting traditional values better country—in favor of rule of law and empty glasses that the college filled with were static, rigid/dogmatic, ritualistic, and civil society. I worked for a level playing concepts, values, and theories. I am parochial. Individuals and societies could field and to help those not in power to thankful to Dartmouth. I received a better be measured from tradition to modernity compete. My most fulfilling activities were understanding of freedom, human rights, to the degree they espouse these value sets. helping small groups working for freedom. and was willing to take risks in their Interestingly, this formalization was never pursuit. Sometimes I was tossed out of the published in his written works that I saw. country. Other times I got a medal. He just made allusions to these concepts.
44 He also taught a strategy of change. A and architectural accomplishments—being received a letter in Santiago from Kal to the modernizing political leader can most easily among the most advanced countries in the effect, “I was rummaging through the CV’s change the political system, followed by the world, perpetrated the Holocaust?” I on file for the Lima position. Why don’t economic system, then educational, then believe he found the answer in his you fly up to Lima and interview with Dick the religious, and finally the family and interpretation of German society’s value Dye and Abe Lowenthal?” (Dick was Ford personal. I used this construct in my system within the parameters of modern representative and Abe held the social undergraduate thesis on Turkey’s versus traditional. While on the surface the science position.) I did so, was offered the modernization by Kemal Atatürk, who did country was modern; in its soul it was post, staying with Ford for ten years. not face strong opposition till he banned traditional in a way that permitted the fez. I recall my thesis advisor (a Middle horrendous crimes. He saw some of the Kal died in 1976, so we overlapped at the East historian) saying at the time, “Now I same dangers under Latin American Ford Foundation only four years. He understand what Kal’s theories are.” military governments. visited Lima on a few occasions where he Granted, however, that Kal never published would meet grantees and speak to office this sequence (to my knowledge) except in Kal also made a distinction between staff. These were magisterial seminars in a mimeographed handout. technicians and artists. Technicians simply which he would impress with his broad applied rules or procedures created by knowledge of world events, and not pull Perhaps his most controversial theoretical others, whereas artists were creators and punches on what he approved and did not statement was his definition of nationalism intellectuals leading society to a higher approve in the United States, in Latin as “the acceptance of the state as the purpose. Clearly Kal considered himself in America, and in the Ford Foundation itself. impersonal and ultimate arbiter of human the artistic class and probably felt many of He saw great evil in the military affairs.” This shorthand definition did not his students would at best be technicians. governments of Chile and Argentina, had sit well with scholars who integrated We could suffer this implied label due to more nuanced views of Brazil, and was language, religion, culture, territory, our youth and inexperience. Kal ran into suspicious but withheld judgment on the ethnicity, and history into their definition of trouble, however, with bureaucracy and Revolutionary Government of the Armed nationalism. He added many qualifiers to with some of his senior peers who sensed Forces in Peru under General Velasco. the definition, but in its short form it he thought of them as mere technicians. Ford had a research grant with the seemed fully at odds with Kal’s own belief Planning Institute. At a meeting in the in freedom and abhorrence of state One more aspect of Kal’s personality is Institute, I recall his forceful rejection of compulsion. I never understood why he worth mentioning. He did not take care of their intention to keep the research findings chose that definition. himself. He smoked heavily, was confidential. If they would not publish the overweight, and did not exercise. He results, Ford would withdraw the grant. Mostly, Kal spoke authoritatively and admitted in class that he drove automobiles affectionately of his times in Latin America. too fast (which could be said to be the way All social science grants went to him for He referred frequently to checking his he drove his life). This behavior turned out review, and he would write two- or theoretical interpretations with Latin to harmful to him and, when he passed three-page opinion recommendations. American scholars in long and far-reaching away, to all who admired him. These were highly valued for their erudite debates in “Buenos Aires coffee houses.” historical and theoretical content. To be That sounded pretty good to After leaving Dartmouth, Kal joined the sure, they were received anxiously in the undergraduate students with a romantic Ford Foundation as head of the Social field office and analyzed and discussed image of intellectual life in Paris in the Science Program in New York. The thoroughly by the local program officers. 1950s—but taking place in an exciting new Foundation was recruiting for the assistant Hints of praise in the memos made the land waiting to be explored. social science advisor position in the Lima program officer’s day. Admonitions or office. While finishing up my PhD circumspect disapproval caused heartburn. Kal was passionate about values. A dissertation, I had submitted my resume to Sometimes one had to be satisfied when the question he raised in the classroom was Ford (not to Kal) through Ford’s Chile verdict was that the grant, or the grant telling. “How is it that Germany—with its office. After a first candidate chose instead justification, was “unobjectionable.” philosophical, musical, literary, scientific, to go to Harvard (Jorge Domínguez), I
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I began my Latin American career in his my life, and would clearly be among the exclusion of indigenous populations in class in 1966, and the career continues to top four persons who inspired me. Guatemala and Peru. this day. It included senior positions in three foundations, several years in Latin I remember his strong objection to the U.S. American banking and investment, several John F. Keane Interview role in the 1954 Guatemala coup. And he books, university teaching. He was the key August 22, 2012 was very enthusiastic about the Christian figure in my recruitment to the Ford Democratic Party coming into power in Foundation. His value categories helped PC: What do you remember most from Chile. It had a solid base and was me understand the mind-sets and political Kal’s teachings? committed to changing the system of views of elites and revolutionaries I met injustice. and observed throughout my career. JK: I took a Silvert course on Latin American government, very focused on I was in Peru during the ham-fisted efforts After graduating from Dartmouth, I went empirical evidence of long-term trends of the Peruvian military government to to Chile on a fellowship and conducted largely related to weak democratic achieve social reform. I thought of Kal’s interviews with municipal councilmen from institutions, oligopolies, inequality, and emphasis on inclusion of all social sectors. the five political parties, from the rightist impatience for change which engendered I worked a lot with APRA, which had National to the leftist Socialist and social unrest and repression. He used a national inclusiveness as an objective in Communist Parties. The politicians very empirical approach to develop theories their image of “Indo America.” Much of received me cordially as a young academic. on why events happened as they did and the Velasco military regime program was to After finishing my interviews, I was invited what may happen in the future. give indigenous peasants in the sierra and by the political officer in the U.S. Embassy workers in the sugar refineries a role in for a meeting. He asked whether I would He was a mind-numbing empiricist. Some decision making through cooperatives. I turn over my interview data for them to would consider he relied too much on remember thinking how this corresponded understand the councilmen’s views. I empirical data to develop his theory of to Kal’s thinking of the peasants and thought of Kal’s deep anger over the political dynamism and social change, and workers being participants and not Camelot Project, where U.S. researchers the reaction of elites to change (through subjects. were to conduct surveys of Chileans repression). ostensibly for academic purposes, but were PC: Did you continue with Latin American really secretly employed by the U.S. At Dartmouth I also took two courses from interests? military. I declined the political officer’s Frank Safford (still teaching at request, replying that my study of Chilean Northwestern University), who wrote on JK: As a Latin Americanist, Silvert was a municipal councilmen was based on a the country of Colombia. As a historian strong influence on my life. On entering promise of confidentiality. My findings Safford spoke of culture, thought processes, the Peace Corps, I insisted on being sent to hopefully would be published (they were) and trends to explain political change, in Latin America and preferably Colombia. and available to all interested readers. I contrast to Silvert’s empiricism. In fact, that’s where I went. I became think that would have been Kal’s answer. enamored with Colombia, and I spent 37 PC: What might you recall from his ethics, years of my career as a U.S. diplomat in Kalman Silvert was an intensely serious values, or philosophy? Latin America. intellectual who lived passionately in pursuit of fundamentally important causes JK: Today we would call him a PC: If you were to think of the ten persons of democracy, freedom of thought, human progressive. He profoundly believed that who inspired you as a young professional, rights, and scholarly accountability. He social reform was a moral imperative. He would Professor Silvert be on the list? believed that education was a public policy was very strategic in his approach. For him intervention that could reinforce traditional social inequality was personally JK: I would place Kal certainly in the top values negatively or imbue individual repugnant—as he observed the extreme ten, perhaps six or seven. Those above citizens with modern, empathetic, and inequality in Latin America in the 1950s would be other persons who also inspired positivist values. He was very influential in and 1960s. He was concerned about the
46 me, like some of the ambassadors with There were three positions open—Chile, I admired the goals he set for the Ford whom I worked. Peru, and Brazil (at the Viçosa Agricultural Foundation in Latin America. After he University in Minas Gerais). I visited all passed away, Ford changed to a more PC: How would you describe him, in one three locations. The Brazil option was not technocratic and direct action mode. It or two sentences? attractive; Chile during the Allende regime abandoned the idea of using social science was exciting, as was Peru to a lesser degree to enable Latin American scholars to JK: Kalman Silvert felt that social change but more likely to remain stable than Chile. understand their own situation and put was a moral imperative in Latin America, I chose Peru, where I worked from October forth policy recommendations. Ford and he constructed strategies drawing on 1971 to the end of 1974. Afterwards I took started supporting “direct action,” his values, knowledge, and research to a leave of absence at Cornell University and becoming more like the Inter-American address inequality and repression. continued my Latin American career at the Foundation while the IAF was mutating to World Bank. become more like the old Ford Foundation. In my view, this change at Ford was Peter T. Knight Interview PC: What might you recall from his ethics, regrettable. Staff became less incorporated August 25, 2012 values, or philosophy? into local society and spent more of their time flying between countries they covered. PC: What do you remember most from PK: Kal was a liberal who stood up against Consequently they were less integrated into Kal’s teachings? the forces of reaction on the left and right. the social science communities in the His attitude at Ford was, “We’ve come here countries where they lived. There were PK: I audited Kal’s course at Dartmouth. I to help you do what you think needs to be fewer field offices and less staff. recall the content was based on his time done. If you have the will, we will back with the American University Field Services you.” PC: Can you describe any times when you in Latin America. He taught that Latin thought of him in guiding your career? America is a fascinating place dealing with Kal was instrumental in getting Ford to significant issues. That is what stuck with support the Centro Brasileiro de Análise e PK: Even though I just audited one of his me from his class. Although I just audited Planejamento (CEBRAP) in Brazil and the courses, exposure to Kal was a key his class, his teachings piqued my interest, Corporación de Estudios para influence on my career. He was the reason even though time passed before I dedicated Latinoamérica (CIEPLAN) in Chile. Kal’s I launched my lifetime engagement with my career to Latin America. thesis was that, during these countries’ Latin America. military governments, if social scientists PC: Did you have other interaction with were not under immediate physical threat But the path was roundabout. At Professor Silvert? and wanted to stay in the country, Ford Dartmouth I took a course on Middle East would support the establishment of new politics. I was one of the first two PK: I joined the Ford Foundation in 1971 research institutes where they could work undergraduates to receive an overseas when Kal was social science advisor in productively while they sought additional internship to study Middle East politics, New York. But Kal had nothing to do with financing. He had to fight to get these with the country choices being Turkey or my appointment, as far as I know. I was at ideas accepted by Ford, but he prevailed. Egypt. I chose Egypt to study the Brookings and wanted to go to Latin He broke the ground in Brazil, and the formation of the Arab League, and spent America. Abe Lowenthal had already left strategy extended also to CIEPLAN in five months based there, but also traveling Brookings and joined the Foundation’s Chile. This support—which would not to the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, and Lima office. He encouraged me to apply have occurred without Kal’s convictions— Lebanon. On my return to Dartmouth for for a position in the Ford Foundation. I was one of the most important things the the winter term 1962 I wrote my figured that Ford had indirectly financed Ford Foundation did in Latin America at undergraduate thesis on this topic, and also much of what I had done to date—my the time (still felt today) and perhaps a term paper on Zionism as a pressure position at Brookings and my fellowship globally as well. group in U.S. politics. I got a Fulbright from the ACLS [American Council of Fellowship to Oxford (Worcester College Learned Societies]—so the idea made sense. and the Middle East Centre, the latter
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headed by Professor Albert Hourani). At checking this out during my first months in Walton N. Smith Interview the Middle East Centre I participated in Brazil, I concluded that producer hedging August 24, 2012 seminars with Hourani, the author whose would not be viable in Brazil for many books I most admired when researching my years. While doing my research, I was also PC: What do you remember most from his thesis. My experience there, in the Middle teaching macroeconomics at a Brazilian teachings? East, and at Dartmouth led me to government training center, and across the appreciate how powerful a hold Zionism street there was a group of economists WS: I took two courses from Professor and oil companies had on U.S. foreign advising the Planning Ministry led by Silvert. One was on methodology that policy. There was very little space for a Professor Albert Fishlow, then of UC included Max Weber. That was the one student to operate without being wedded Berkley. He became a kind of mentor and Dartmouth class notebook I kept for many to one of them. suggested I change my topic to import years. Just recently while cleaning, I looked substitution and export expansion in at it and asked myself, “Why am I keeping Speaking with older mature fellows at St. Brazilian agriculture. I convinced my this?” Well, unfortunately I don’t have it Anthony’s College, the full implications of Stanford dissertation advisors to accept this anymore. becoming an Arab region specialist came change. I am sure that Kal would have home to me. I’d need to spend a full year considered this subject more relevant. His teaching on methodology has had a just to learn Arabic and then to work in a lasting effect on the way I interpret region plagued with the Zionist and oil PC: If you were to think of the ten persons things—like an S curve on population. He issues mentioned earlier. In the Arab who inspired you as a young professional, introduced us to analytical tools we could region, you were either a friend or an would Professor Silvert be on the list? use later in many ways. He influenced how enemy; there was no grey area. I read a book. For the methodology PK: Of course Kal would be on the list of course, the class read a little short book by I thought back to Kal’s description of Latin ten, along with Albert Hirschman, Albert Weber. It was heavy Germanic going. America, and all the adventures he had. I Hourani, and Joseph Grunwald at When we got to class, Professor Silvert just decided that for all these reasons—and Brookings. During my postdoc at Cornell asked us, “To whom is the book despite the huge intellectual investment I University, Jaroslav Vanek, Peter Miovic, dedicated?” Well, that was the last had made to the Middle East region—that I and Branko Horvat were influential for my question we were prepared to answer. No should switch to Latin America. The region studies on worker management. I can’t say one knew. He then directed us to the two offered a more legitimate political space for that I had any mentors during my 21 years names in the dedication, and explained the Americans given the diverse U.S. players at the World Bank. If I had had more following. By choosing these names, Max active there, the languages would be easier interaction with Kal, I’m sure he would Weber was taking a position in an ongoing to learn, and Latin America had all the have been an excellent mentor. intellectual debate, as did the introduction fascinations Kal described. Kal had planted which we had all skipped as well. Simply a seed in my mind that was ready to PC: How would you describe him, in one by selecting these names, Weber was stating blossom. or two sentences? his position. Kal advised us, “Don’t ever ignore the dedications.” Since then, I have PC: Were there any times you remember PK: Kal Silvert was a consummately read every word an author puts in his thinking of him when making important tough-minded liberal. printed work and find that I would have decisions or ethical judgments? missed a lot of good stuff had I not done so. The way Kal conveyed this message PK: By extension, Kal was responsible for was very embarrassing for us. We had all my doing my PhD dissertation in the notes on the Weber book – but nobody economics at Stanford University on Brazil. had noticed the dedication. This was My principal dissertation advisor urged me characteristic of Kal’s academic theatrics. to study hedging in the Brazilian agricultural market as a way for producers Let me tell a story on his teaching style. A to protect against price fluctuations. After bunch of us were invited to his house one
48 evening. For some reason he was affect their profession and harm other By extension, development forced from the prompted to play the violin. I had never legitimate researchers. Latin America outside is less likely to prevail compared to been that close to a violin, being more officials and interviewees would never when it comes from the people themselves. interested at the time in opera. He said know whether an American researcher I remember reading a book on Turkey that that we would not understand music unless were not really a U.S. spy. These academics pointed out that village leaders did not like we understood the violin, especially Pablo did not consider the real-world specific Atatürk policies but found a Sarasate. He showed if you don’t play the implications of their behavior. Kal felt that different way to make them their own. violin correctly, all you get is a hissing they entered academia without professional Change in Turkey was more successful sound. He demonstrated that if you miss accountability and ended up violating its because it came from the people. just a bit with your fingers or the bow, the principles. sound was awful. But his real message was In sum, I found many applications of Kal that you have always to pay attention to Kal was important in forming my personal Silvert’s teaching through my experiences in the little things, to the details. If you do worldview in ways that I would never have the American South and Vietnam. that, you will get it (whatever “it” is). As imagined in 1960 going to Hanover, New with the violin on his shoulder, the notes Hampshire, from Macon, Georgia. If you PC: Did you have other interaction with from the instrument vibrate and reach your look at where I came from and the Professor Silvert? brain, and you will see that you are getting influences making me see what was wrong it right—by paying attention to the little and out of place, you begin to understand WS: At Dartmouth, I became a public things. The lesson to pay attention to the the changes I experienced. I was not administration major (rather than details—explained in this way—stayed getting these new ideas from Macon’s government or something else) because I with me for the rest of my career. Lanier High School. knew I wasn’t going to be a political scientist, but I took his courses because I One other thing about his teaching actually In the winter of 1960 Jere Smith and I went enjoyed the subject and I enjoyed him. The bothered me. It was modernization, which on a tour of civil rights activities in Atlanta. Max Weber course was the only I thought was a soft concept. It did not We wrote it up. At the time John Lewis methodology course I took since the PA seem to be backed by data. I was more in was leading a sit-in at Loeb’s restaurant. I major required taking only one of them. I line with the social science side, and felt put the civil rights movement in a chose that Max Weber course because I there was not enough hard definition of the development context. enjoyed being in Professor Silvert’s class. I concept. He was striving to give a hard already knew I wanted to be a lawyer and definition to modernization but had not Drawing on Silvert’s classes, my analysis was able to benefit from the course without gotten there. was political and economic. The South was considering that it required a full disadvantaged in economic growth because professional engagement. PC: What might you recall from his ethics, the division between poor whites and values, or philosophy? blacks was perpetuated by Bourbon I mentioned to him that I wanted to be a Democrats who wanted to maintain lawyer. He let me know that he had WS: I remember there was an event that control. That major portions of the walked up the steps of the University of related to his time with the American Field population were not integrated into society Pennsylvania law school—“before turning Services. Project Camelot was a research was similar to Latin America. This around to do something more useful” with project by American scholars secretly integration was not going to be handed his life. While I did not take his advice, I funded by the U.S. military to find out. The disenfranchised had to make the definitely remember it. I have told people information on Latin America that would play themselves to move up—and they did. that Dartmouth took this boy from Macon, be reported back to the U.S. government. The process could have been more violent, Georgia, and introduced him to the great Kal was extremely annoyed. He was not so and fortunately wiser heads prevailed. But world. Silvert did a lot of that introducing. bothered that the military would want this the lesson was that you could not hand out information, but that the academics went freedom but had to take it on your own. After Dartmouth and three years of law along with this plan. The academics never school, I ended up in the military in Saigon, had considered how their actions would Vietnam. It was 1967. One day a
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Dartmouth classmate from a U.S. naval and yet friendly and welcoming not influential as “Herr Professor,” but in outpost—also a Silvert student—visited me environment that I felt surrounded Kal. the way he affected my life in a general in Saigon. We got roaringly drunk while way. He was the number one influence at talking about our Vietnam experience. We PC: Any other thoughts or anecdotes to Dartmouth and would be in the second five decided that we needed to tell Professor share? overall. Silvert what we thought, so we got a four-track tape and dictated our findings. WS: In March 1964, a major civil rights When I told my wife about this We talked about what we had seen up incident erupted in St. Augustine, Florida. reminiscence project and how I would country and in Saigon. Lots of what we The situation was getting out of hand. It reflect on his influence, she commented, saw related to what Kal had taught about was during spring break, and a lot of “I’m not surprised with what you say since Latin America—social change in a students from the Northeast traveled to St. you have been thinking this way for 40 traditional society, nationalism, the struggle Augustine. The head of the Tucker years.” against entrenched forces, and a developing Foundation (Fred Berthold?) led a group of country in revolution. It is illustrative of Dartmouth students to join the movement. our feelings for Kal Silvert that we thought Well, they got arrested and needed bail Eric Paul Veblen Interview sending him this tape was the appropriate money to get out of jail. WDCR, the August 23, 2012 thing to do. (It would be great to find that college radio station, hooked up a live tape today.) telephone line to St. Augustine to follow PC: What do you remember most from events. Kal’s teachings? PC: How would you describe him, in one or two sentences? The radio station needed people in EPV: Kal had been in the places he was Hanover to fill in dead air. Among those writing and teaching about. He had been WS: Kal had a great personality. A very who talked were Professor Silvert and me. there and observed events firsthand. You hard worker, he grappled with the Kal used his airtime to speak of the larger did not find that much on the part of many challenge of raising the technical part of his social and political context of the civil academics. intellectual craft to a high level. He was rights movement and the events in St. able to convey his values and work ethic to Augustine. But when he was off air, he had I took two courses with Kal—Latin students, whom he treated as adults. ironic statements about the whole America politics and methodology. The enterprise. He said that the students and methodology seemed more like sociology I cannot let this pass without some mention university official who had gone down and focused on Max Weber. of Frieda Silvert, who seemed to me to not were basically ivory tower academics who only be Kal’s wife, but also frequently his were ill prepared for the mission. How The goal of his Latin America course was partner in his work. She seemed a great could they not foresee how they would be not to learn facts. Rather he stressed the support to him. There was some half- received and what would happen? And context and ways to think about the topic. remembered story he told about their living they had not even taken the precaution of In Latin America, he used typologies of in a village in perhaps Central America arranging beforehand for bail money! political systems. The method revealed the where the air was blue at night from the great differences between countries’ levels high bean content of the diet, and her As a final word, I remember him saying, of development, and relative development working along with him in whatever the “Chile has the most beautiful women in the of regions within a country. He taught the study was. She also put up most graciously world.” heterogeneity of development and with students descending on their home in modernization. In his work, modernization Woodstock, Vermont, and—at least in my PC: If you were to think of the ten persons was his main theme, extending from overall case—into a rather large and fancy party who inspired you as a young professional, concepts to the makeup of a modern man they were having at their double apartment would Professor Silvert be on the list? or woman. He did a good job of conveying at NYU after they had moved to New York the vastly different levels of modernization, City. Frieda was part of the sharp, solid, WS: I thought the world of him. Silvert from those segments of the population not would certainly be in the top ten. Kal was oriented toward national politics to those
50 who shared values associated with totalitarianism and violent aspects of academia, his influence was important for education. politics. I read Chris Mitchell’s essay on our own writing and teaching. Kal’s reaction to NYU’s procedure for The modern parts of the country attained a dismissing junior faculty. I did not observe Kal had spent so much time in Latin greater ability to identify with the nation in this aspect of Kal, but it was consistent America, this direct experience gave him approaching politics. This was Kal’s way with other impressions of him. He was not many anecdotes. He once told us about a of getting you to think about politics in willing to compromise beyond a certain heated dispute he had in an Argentine developing countries rather than just facts point. He was against repressive forces restaurant. After things calmed down, about the country. He was successful in holding back human dignity in Latin Kal’s adversary left the restaurant. An doing this. America and everywhere. I believe that Kal anarchist approached Kal and said, “Would had strong ethics and they reinforced my you like me to go outside and break his Kal gave a lot of emphasis to typologies to own. arm?” conduct social science analysis. He gave us an unusual midterm exam question—to PC: Did you continue with Latin American PC: If you were to think of the ten persons write out the table of contents of Weber’s interests? who inspired you as a young professional, book. Partially it was his way to find out would Professor Silvert be on the list? If who was doing their homework. More EPV: After Dartmouth I went to graduate so, what number in importance? importantly, he was helping structure our school at Yale in political science but did minds to understand Weber’s approach. not emphasize Latin America. My main EPV: Kal would certainly be on the list of interest was American politics and political ten. He had a tremendous influence on the Kal’s theories were most important for the behavior. I went back to Dartmouth to do Ford Foundation and while in academia. development field. A book that has stuck research for my dissertation and had some He would be right up at the top at number with me for a long time was “Man’s contact with Kal, but not really in close one or two. Power.” This outstanding work was a touch. Then in 1968–69, he asked if I’d terrific demonstration of the scope of his like to be at the Ford Foundation. I went mind. We once talked about [the renowned for interviews at Ford in Latin America. Bios political scientist] Robert Dahl, whom Kal He helped to get me hired. I worked in referred to as a “small theory man.” This New York, Venezuela, and Colombia. I James C. Cason received his AB degree was not meant to be derogatory. The was with Ford from 1969 to 1971, but I from Dartmouth College in 1966 and MA phrase stuck with me as a significant was not around Kal very much. Later I from the School of Advanced International contrast from Kal, who was a great went into a business that did not have a Studies (Johns Hopkins) in 1968. After synthesizer intellectually. He was thinking Latin American component. I attended joining the U.S. State Department, his in the grandest terms. His was “big Kal’s 1976 memorial service. career included postings in El Salvador, theory.” In “Man’s Power,” Kal was trying Venezuela, Portugal, Italy, Uruguay, to answer the most difficult questions. PC: How would you describe him, in one Panama, Guatemala, Bolivia, Honduras, or two sentences? Jamaica, and Cuba, culminating as U.S. While an undergraduate, Kal influenced me Ambassador to Paraguay. His bold to learn Spanish. Not necessarily related to EPV: Kal Silvert had a great and powerful diplomatic style resulted in his expulsion his teachings, but one vivid memory from intellect that synthesized diverse areas of from Uruguay and wide press coverage his class was Don Bross saying in Spanish, knowledge. All who were around Kal while Chief of Mission in Cuba. He speaks “President Kennedy has just been shot.” would agree that he had a compelling Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Guarani, personality. At Dartmouth, he attracted a and serves as President of the Center for a PC: What might you recall from his ethics, following of students devoted to him. Part Free Cuba. Currently he is the elected values, or philosophy? of his personality was a fantastic sense of mayor of Coral Gables, Florida. Contact: humor. He was sociable and fun to be 1040 Alhambra Circle, Coral Gables, Fl EPV: Kal was a highly principled person. with. For those who continued in 33134, [email protected], Tel. He did not hide his disdain for 305-409-4061.
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Peter Shurtleff Cleaves, a 1966 Dartmouth 1962), Oxford University (BA 1964), and which he entered the private sector. For College graduate, obtained his MA from Stanford University (MA 1965 and PhD over three decades he held executive Vanderbilt University and PhD from the 1970). His early career included positions at Pacesetter Personnel Services University of California at Berkeley. He appointments at the Brookings Institution (formerly Industrial Labor Service), until has held executive positions at the Ford in Washington, DC, and the Ford recently reducing his time dedication to Foundation (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Foundation in Lima, Peru. At the World attend to other interests. Contact: 3501 Mexico, Central America), the First Bank, his positions included participation Carriage Lane, Plano, Texas 75023, National Bank of Chicago (Panama and in the 1980 World Development Report [email protected], Tel. 972-964-4867. Northern South America), the University of team, and lead positions in the Brazil Texas (Institute of Latin American Studies), Department and the Economic the AVINA Foundation (Brazil, Spain, Development Institute. He established the Portugal, Ecuador, and as executive Electronic Media Center, later merged into director), and the Emirates Foundation the External Relations Department. He is (CEO, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates). proficient in several foreign languages Aside from English, he conducts business in (Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Russian), French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Currently and current activities revolve around he provides advisory services for e-government and e-learning with foundations, nonprofits, and Gulf investors numerous clients and writings in these entering Latin America. Contact: 3605 areas. Contact: Avenida Atlântica Flamevine Cove, Austin, Texas 78735, 4022/302, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil, [email protected], Tel. 512- [email protected], +55 (21) 2522-9167 328-9190. and +55 (21) 7519-9033.
John Francis Keane, who graduated from Walton Napier Smith graduated from Dartmouth College in 1966, pursued Dartmouth College in 1962. He served in postgraduate studies at Georgetown the U.S. Army in Saigon, Vietnam, and at University. After serving in the Peace Corps the Pentagon, before earning his law degree in Colombia, he began his U.S. Foreign at Harvard University. He worked several Service career with postings in Vietnam, years as a lawyer for Amtrak before joining Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, the firm of Lord, Bissell & Brook, where he and Guatemala. He was Acting Deputy represented clients from offices in Assistant Secretary of State for Western Washington, Chicago, and Atlanta. Hemisphere Affairs responsible for Public Currently he is owner of Soque ArtWorks, Diplomacy, Canada, and Central America. a gallery of unique art and craft created in From 2003 to 2005, he was U.S. mountainous regions of Georgia and Ambassador to Paraguay. Currently, aside nearby states. Contact: 575 Fenwick from his longtime interest in birding and Wood, Clarkesville, GA 30523, wnsmith@ sailing the Potomac, he coordinates the soquesmiths.com, Tel. 706-754-8036. speakers program for the Washington- based American Foreign Service Eric Paul Veblen, a Dartmouth College Association. Contact: 6572 Elmdale graduate in 1964, received his MA and Road, Alexandria, VA 22312, PhD degrees in political science from Yale [email protected], Tel. 703-642- University. His Ford Foundation tenure 2214. included postings in Caracas, Venezuela, and Bogotá, Colombia. As an academic, he Peter Titcomb Knight received academic accepted teaching appointments at Vassar degrees from Dartmouth College (AB College and Texas A&M University, after
52 on lasa2013
Final Report on the 31st International Congress in Washington, DC by Gwen Kirkpatrick | Georgetown University | [email protected] and Kenneth M. Roberts | Cornell University | [email protected]
From May 28 to June 1, nearly 4,000 LASA one-third less than for the San Francisco enjoyable, so with our work on that members and guests converged on the Congress of 2012. Given the ample number Congress now complete, we would like to Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in of meeting rooms in the Marriott Wardman offer a special word of thanks to all the Washington for the Association’s 2013 Park, this decline in the number of track chairs* who generously devoted their International Congress. The Congress proposals allowed track chairs to reduce the time and energy to evaluate proposals and started with a series of pre-Congress rejection rate and accept a much higher shape the final program. Their volunteer workshops directed primarily to younger percentage of proposed papers and panels. spirit makes LASA what it is today. We members of the profession, for example, A higher acceptance rate was an objective would also like to express our gratitude to workshops on publishing, databases, and a of LASA for this Congress cycle, so we are the outgoing president, Evelyne Huber, and visit to the Library of Congress. The pleased to have made progress toward the members of the Executive Council for awards and welcoming ceremony on meeting this goal. We expect the new their leadership and support. Finally, we Wednesday evening was highlighted by an annual cycle to help alleviate space thank the remarkably efficient and patient address from José Miguel Insulza, Secretary constraints, balance supply and demand, staff of the LASA Secretariat at the General of the OAS, followed by a and allow for more inclusive and University of Pittsburgh, who did so much reception hosted by Georgetown University. manageable Congress programs. to make LASA2013 a success—Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, Sandra Klinzing, Pilar Conference attendees participated in over As has been the case in recent Congresses, Rodríguez, Soledad Cabezas, and Israel 900 different panels, roundtables, and the rate of acceptance for prearranged Perlov. We wish our successors, Florencia special sessions. These events took place in panels was greater than that for individual Garramuño and Raúl Madrid, great success the spacious meeting facilities of the paper submissions. LASA’s experience with the planning of LASA2014. We know Marriott Wardman Park, and many suggests that prearranged panels are more that the support of the LASA membership addressed the Congress theme of “Latin likely to cohere intellectually than panels and the LASA Secretariat will continue to America: Towards a New Social Contract?” that are cobbled together by track chairs make LASA Congresses the site of rich The LASA Film Festival, again curated by from individual paper submissions. We intellectual, professional, and personal Claudia Ferman, was an important thus encourage LASA members to continue growth. complement to the panels and workshops. to play a proactive role in organizing panels The Book Exhibit offered a streamlined around a common theme that provides for * Silvia Ares de Kurlat, Santa Arias, María way to explore new publications and to greater analytical focus. Please note that Isabel Belausteguigoitia Rius, Merike meet with editors. Of course, much of the under the annual conference cycle, Blofield, Sarah Brooks, Maxwell Cameron, real intellectual and social exchange took proposals for LASA2014 will be due in just Rubí Carreño, Marcos Cueto, Guillermo de place in informal meetings among friends a few months, on September 3, 2013. los Reyes, Mary Finley-Brook, Patrice and colleagues. Franko, Elías García Rosas, Ben Goldfrank, By all indications, members have been Margaret Keck, Marcus Kurtz, Jorge The Washington setting provided LASA enthusiastic about recent program and Lanzaro, Juan Pablo Luna, Lillian Manzor, members not only with attractive social and technological innovations introduced for Leonilde Sérvolo Medeiros, Mariselle cultural opportunities but also with access LASA Congresses. This is especially true of Meléndez, Eyda Merediz, Carmen Millán, to sites of historical and political the pre-Congress workshops, which have Paula Miranda, Egon Montecinos, Scott importance, national and transnational been well attended and generated very Morgenstern, Raúl Necochea, Elías Palti, government agencies, and a variety of positive reviews, and of the “LASA app” Aldo Panfichi, Leigh Payne, Anthony nongovernmental organizations with real-time conference software that runs on Pereira, Enrique Peruzzotti, Joanne activities in the Latin American region. tablets and smart phones. Future Rappaport, Matt Samson, Gonzalo Saraví, Congresses are likely to make greater use of Andrew Schrank, Ana Serra, Ken Shadlen, As expected, the shift from an 18-month to social media to foster communication Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Catalina Smulovitz, a 12-month conference cycle reduced the among LASA members and to facilitate William Stanley, Joel Stillerman, Augusto de number of proposals for a program with a program coordination. la Torre, María Amelia Viteri, Alexander limited number of available slots. Over Wilde, Wendy Wolford, Ana Wortman. 1,500 proposals were submitted for panels We have heard from many members who or individual papers, approximately found LASA2013 to be rewarding and
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LASA Business Meeting
LASA President’s Report this number, 1,849 were new members for international scholars to serve as track 2012. Thus far for 2013 there are 4,685 chairs. They also combined some small LASA President Evelyne Huber welcomed individual members, representing a 39 tracks from the previous year. There were everyone to the Business Meeting. Huber percent decrease since 2012. However, more submissions of panel proposals than reported that this was the first Congress on LASA is just at midpoint in its membership individual papers. They were able to an annual schedule and it has worked out year and she does expect that number to accept 100 percent of the panel extremely well. The reason for the increase significantly during the Congress submissions and most of the individual transition to an annual Congress was to be and afterward, as individuals register to be submissions. Moving to an annual cycle able to limit the proposal rejection rate, able to submit their proposals for reduced the number of submissions, and which had been running at about 30 LASA2014. the hotel is sufficiently large to percent. This time all panel proposals were accommodate many sessions. accepted and the rejection rate for Institutional memberships currently individual papers was very low. The number 35, representing a decline of 7 The pre-conference workshops drew transition was a huge job for the Secretariat percent since 2012. She does not expect considerable interest. Some that had been and was accomplished well by Milagros this number to increase; there has been a successful in the past were being repeated. Pereyra, Maria Soledad Cabezas, Pilar recent decline in institutional memberships Latin American Research Review editor Rodriguez, Sandy Klinzing, and their due to the increasing availability of digital Philip Oxhorn organized two workshops colleagues in Pittsburgh. There were about journals. and another took place at the Library of 3,500 registered participants. This Congress. Congress can boast a reasonable schedule, Regarding fund-raising, LASA received with a 45-minute time slot for lunch, and financial support for Congress travel grants Lastly, Kirkpatrick reported that the still end at 6:00 pm instead of 8:00 as with once again from the Open Society co-chairs also tried to avoid having other the 18-month Congresses. The Congress Foundations and the Inter-American panels compete with the presidential program chairs did a fantastic job of Foundation, and from the AVINA panels. One panel was organized by organizing a nice set of invited panels, and Foundation for LASA Life Memberships Cynthia Arnson of the Woodrow Wilson Gwen Fitzpatrick secured space at for the next four recipients of the Kalman International Center for Scholars. Roberta Georgetown University for the Welcoming Silvert Award. Jacobson, Assistant Secretary of State for Reception. This time the leadership team Western Hemisphere Affairs, also of Huber, Past President Maria Hermínia The LASA Endowment has risen to $4.5 participated in a panel that discussed the Tavares, and President-elect Merilee million. An independent firm was brought main issues in U.S.–Latin American Grindle were proactive in contacting the in to conduct an evaluation of the relations. There was another panel on State Department regarding Cuban visas. Endowment managers. They determined gender as well. Kirkpatrick also attempted The team was joined by a number of past that the oversight provided by Morgan to form a panel with granting agencies, but presidents in signing a letter to the State Stanley Smith Barney was excellent and only the National Endowment for the Department, and they were joined by other reasonably priced; thus LASA will continue Humanities responded. She recommended professional associations who wrote their with the current managers. The next that this attempt be repeated since younger own letters of support. Lastly, Huber Congress will take place in Chicago and scholars are very interested in the subject. reported that the Association continues in President-elect Merilee Grindle will report good shape and in good hands. on that. Vice President’s Report
Report of the LASA Secretariat Report of the XXXI Congress Program Vice President Merilee Grindle indicated Committee her delight at being elected vice president of LASA Executive Director Milagros Pereyra LASA, a role that will be followed shortly reported that the 2012 membership year LASA2013 Program Co-chair Gwen by the title of president, and then past achieved an individual membership total of Kirkpatrick reported that she and Co-chair president. As vice president her primary 7,633, a 15 percent increase over 2011. Of Kenneth Roberts had reached out to job is to name individuals to committees
54 and to work with the program co-chairs to the resolutions they are presented at the campus as well, collaborating with name track chairs for LASA2014. Thus far LASA Business Meeting and then mailed to colleagues. she has contacted over 100 individuals, and the LASA membership for a vote. Grindle about 98 have been delighted to agree to asked if the members present wished her to Lutjens then referred to the Association’s serve. This speaks well about the level of read the two resolutions that had been previous decision to not host Congresses in commitment of the membership to the approved for presentation; members the United States as long as there was a Association. The new program co-chairs responded that they could read them general denial of visas for several would-be are Raúl Madrid (University of Texas at themselves. The Secretariat will send the Latin American participants. The Austin) and Florencia Garramuño resolutions electronically to the membership was not consulted when (Universidad de San Andres in Buenos membership within the next few weeks. Congresses did return to the United States Aires). LASA2014 will take place in For a resolution to be approved it must be in LASA2013. Lutjens reported her Chicago from May 21 to May 24. The voted upon by at least 20 percent of the understanding that 13 Cuban and 2 theme is Democracy and Memory. The current membership and approved by the Mexican scholars had been denied visas for theme mirrors a set of activities that majority of those voters. this Congress. Grindle and her colleagues are planning at Harvard. It also commemorates the 40th Lastly, the previous year the EC had voted anniversary of the coup in Chile (this fall) New Business to change the policy regarding the approval and the 50th anniversary of the coup in of resolutions. In 2012 the resolutions had Brazil. What is attractive about this theme Long-standing LASA member Sheryl failed not because of a lack of favorable is that there is virtually no discipline that Lutjens presented a petition on behalf of votes but because more than 20 percent of has not been engaged in thinking about herself and several members. The petition the membership failed to respond regarding democracy and memory. The program sought to call attention to their concerns approval of the resolutions. co-chairs and Grindle will formulate panels regarding the need for increased discussion to discuss what is remembered, how it is between LASA leadership and the remembered, and what the legacies are in membership when important decisions President Huber responded to the points terms of the current social and political were being taken. One of these concerns raised: institutions in Latin America today. She is had to do with the change from an looking forward to a very busy year. 18-month Congress to an annual schedule, A survey was conducted with the Lastly, Grindle acknowledged that she is a as well as the selection of the later part of membership regarding the scheduling of long-term fan of LASA, which brings May for the Congress dates. It was the Congresses. A full 70 percent of the individuals together as no other institution believed that the decision had been taken membership responded and the majority can. without previous consultation with the voted for the move to an annual Congress. membership, and that, although it had In regard to location of the Congress, a lot positive results in terms of increased depends upon the space within potential Resolutions proposal acceptance, it did place a financial hotels and the cost involved to the burden on many members to attend an membership. A number of parameters have Vice President Grindle reviewed the annual event. The Sections also felt a to be considered in deciding upon the resolutions process, which includes (1) burden to prepare proposals and organize Congress venue. The date of the Congress submission at least 30 days prior to the events with such a quick turnaround. was also carefully reviewed to avoid Executive Council (EC) meeting; (2) conflict with other associations. In regard submission with the signatures of at least The selection of May for the Congress to hosting Congress outside the United 30 LASA members in good standing; (3) meant that since most universities have States and the denial of visas, Huber review by the Resolutions Subcommittee completed their academic year at that point reminded her colleagues that a number of where they are discussed; (4) discussion at there was no option to sponsor a Latin visas had been denied for Canada as well. the meeting of Ways and Means; and (5) American scholar for the Congress and Vice President Grindle referred to the submission to the full EC for consideration. then have him or her spend time on a U.S. “experimental nature” of the move to an If at least two-thirds of the EC approves annual Congress. The decision will be
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on lasa2013
LASA2013 Awards and Recipients
reviewed after three Congresses. Thus far Kalman Silvert Award just in time for the inauguration of its it seems to have been effective in reducing renowned Institute of Latin American the number of proposals rejected. The Kalman Silvert Award Committee Studies. I was able to study with such consisted of Maria Hermínia Tavares de luminaries as Albert O. Hirschman, Juan J. Another member present encouraged the Almeida, Chair (Universidade de São Linz, Frank Tannenbaum, and the LASA leadership always to be “proactive” Paulo), Julio Cotler (Instituto de Estudios indefatigable Lewis Hanke. . . . In in regard to the potential denial of visas. Peruanos), Eric Hershberg (American subsequent years I embarked upon a LASA should also attempt to include University), John Coatsworth (Columbia program of self-education in political Cuban resident scholars among the EC. University), and Philip Oxhorn (McGill science, initially by auditing courses at the Executive Director Pereyra responded that University). University of California, Berkeley. With the LASA had consulted with an attorney who encouragement of Kalman Silvert, I specializes in issues regarding Cuba and The 2013 recipient of the Association’s determined to acquire a working command OFAC regulations, and the attorney had highest award, the Kalman Silvert Award, is of quantitative methodology. This linkage advised that under current law Cuban Peter H. Smith, a scholar on United States of history and political science would resident scholars were not permitted to and Latin American relations, and the define a core concern of my scholarly participate in the governing of the Simón Bolívar Professor of Latin American efforts: to analyze long-term patterns of Association. Pereyra agreed to provide the Studies at University of California in San political change in Latin America through letter including that opinion from the Diego. Smith obtained his PhD in the judicious application of cutting-edge attorney. Pereyra added that LASA comparative politics of Latin America from methods in political science. provides free Congress registration to Columbia University in 1996. He has been Cuban scholars. a president of the Latin American Studies My first corpus of research focused on Association as well as being consultant to Argentina and resulted in two books: A final recommendation was that the the Ford Foundation and the John Simon Politics and Beef in Argentina (1969), Association make every effort to schedule Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The which examined political struggles over a the LASA Business Meeting at a time when following remarks are taken from Smith’s key sector of the national economy from it would not conflict with other sessions. autobiographical statement in the spring the 1880s to the 1940s, and Argentina and 2013 issue of the LASA Forum. For the the Failure of Democracy (1974), based on complete text, please see the LASA Forum a statistical analysis of roll-call votes in the article. Chamber of Deputies from 1904 through 1955. . . . These efforts also resulted in a “The journey began many years ago when I book chapter on the breakdown of yearned to take a summer trip to Europe, Argentine democracy in 1930. I then as many of my college classmates did at the turned to Mexico and sought to unravel time. The problem was a lack of funds, so the political logic of its authoritarian I set out on a less expensive venture: a bus regime. . . . I decided to examine the ride from New York City to Mexico City. I structure and transformation of the knew no Spanish, no Mexican history, no nation’s political elite from 1900 through Latin American politics, nothing. . . . That the 1970s. I gathered and computerized trip changed my life. . . . I witnessed student data on the political biographies of more protests, listened to expositions about all than 6,000 officeholders, and produced a sorts of political values, and heard book entitled Labyrinths of Power (1979). discussions (and diatribes) about Fidel One significant by-product of this effort Castro and U.S. imperialism. . . . was a roll-call analysis of voting patterns in Fortunately I enrolled for graduate study in Mexico’s constitutional convention of history at Columbia University in 1961, 1917.
56 In the mid-1980s I received an invitation Bryce Wood Book Award framed and embedded its more strictly from the Ford Foundation to serve as literary expression, and all of this co–staff director of a major project on Bryce Wood Book Award Committee contrasted with highly elaborated U.S.-Mexican relations. The project members included Laurence Whitehead, indigenous ways of imagining and produced a book-length study titled The Chair (Oxford University), Rosario Espinal portraying their world. Beyond the Challenge of Interdependence (1988), led (Temple University), Tulia Falleti Lettered City enriches our understanding to encounters with presidents and (University of Pennsylvania), Paul of literacy in general and of its distinctive dignitaries in both countries, and resulted Gootenberg (SUNY/Stony Brook place in comparative history. It also in the publication of five volumes of University), Andrew Schrank (University of highlights the active and creative responses background papers. Over the years I have New Mexico), Doris Sommer (Harvard of the Andean populations who were edited or coedited more than a dozen University), and Mary Kay Vaughan abruptly exposed to these initially anthologies on subjects ranging from (University of Maryland, College Park). unfamiliar conventions, which they historiography and methodology to apprehended through the lens of their own regional economic integration, Mexican Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous prior symbolic systems. politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, drug Literacies in the Andes by Joanne trafficking, Latin America–East Asia Rappaport and Tom Cummins (Duke The volume shows how this multifaceted relations, and women’s roles in Asia and University Press, 2012) is the 2013 literacy operated as a social process in the Latin America. recipient of the Bryce Wood Book Award. formation of colonial society. The authors The academic study of Latin America in examine three ethnic groups (the Muisca, Teaching has been one of my great English is flourishing, and this year’s Bryce the Pasto, and the Nasa) in the non-Incaic pleasures. . . . In addition, I have drawn Wood Prize Committee received over one setting of the northern Andes. They focus special satisfaction from teaching students hundred nominated volumes—nearly all of on nonelites: testators, local caciques, in other countries—Argentina, Brazil, them valuable contributions to this broad indigenous notaries, and communities China, Ecuador, Mexico, Spain, and interdisciplinary field. But one volume seeking protection of their resources. Their elsewhere. . . . All this work has allowed stood out as an exceptionally ambitious, analysis of intercultural communication is me to do an unexpected variety of things. I thoughtful, and well-constructed vivid and original (e.g., the drawing up of a have traveled to most parts of the world; achievement. Beyond the Lettered City will replete with religious ceremony, visual exchanged thoughts and ideas with public combines fresh and challenging ideas about symbols, legal documents, and the figures, prominent colleagues, and ordinary the foundations of literacy and the inscription of such community valuables as citizens; been the moderator for a monthly cognitive transformations produced under snail shells or painted cloth mantles). Their TV show; and expressed my opinions the impact of Spanish colonization, use of concepts such as appropriation, through op-eds and columns in national together with precise and evocative mutual misunderstanding, and and international newspapers. I have even reinterpretations of well-chosen items of transculturalism is exemplary and sets a served as president of LASA. This career evidence, culled from the northern Andes of high bar for future studies. This is has been a privilege. It has been a the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. combined with a finely crafted and in-depth responsibility as well. . . . I have relished analysis of a broad array of colonial the challenges, accepted the setbacks, and The theoretical ambition of the work is to artifacts—ceremonial crosses, ceramics, savored the satisfactions. To borrow a expand our conception of literacy beyond churches, maps, murals, patents, portraits, phrase from Maya Angelou, “wouldn’t take the unilateral introduction of alphabetic urban grids, and wax seals—as well as of nothing for my journey now.” writing (the theme made famous in Angel literary texts. Each item receives expert Rama’s seminal Lettered City). Rappaport attention from the two authors in a volume and Cummins aim to promote a far that also sets an unusually high standard broader and more interactive for collaboration between scholars drawn understanding of the cognitive impact of from distinct disciplinary backgrounds— the colonial encounter. The symbolic one an anthropologist, the other an art structure of European thought—artistic, historian. architectural, religious, visual, and urban—
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Bryce Wood Book Award Honorable Premio Iberoamericano teórico. Después, a lo largo de lo que Mention presenta como una narración de los El Comité para el Premio Iberoamericano procesos en cada uno de los tres países, los The Bryce Wood Book Award Honorable fue presidido por Elizabeth Jelin diálogos teóricos explícitos e implícitos se Mention was awarded to Isaac Campos for (CONICET-IDES) e integrado por Claudio multiplican y aportan a la Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins Barrientos (Universidad Diego Portales), conceptualización de los procesos de of Mexico’s War on Drugs (University of Saúl Sosnowski (University of Maryland) y cambio y transformación en general y de North Carolina Press, 2012). This was a Kurt Weyland (University of Texas at los procesos revolucionarios en particular. strong runner-up. Home Grown tells the Austin). El libro ganador del concurso es remarkable and unfamiliar history that Revoluciones sin cambios revolucionarios: Con una perspectiva histórica, el libro es culminated in the decision of March 1920 Ensayos sobre la crisis en Centroamérica de un modelo de investigación empírica by which the postrevolutionary Mexican Edelberto Torres-Rivas (F&G Editores, profunda. Torres-Rivas presenta state banned the cultivation and commerce 2011). información específica y datos pertinentes a of marijuana throughout the nation. It su tema, información que relaciona combines a challenging and unexpected Hay veces en que tenemos el privilegio de directamente con sus preocupaciones reconstruction of the long Mexican history encontrar un caso donde convergen la teóricas. No se trata de una ‘mera of production of this plant (initially excelencia académica, el compromiso cívico descripción’; selecciona los hechos imported from Spain to provide fiber for y la preocupación política. Eso es lo que se cuidadosamente y los usa para sustanciar shipping) with a scholarly and persuasive siente leyendo este libro: rigor académico, sus líneas argumentales. De este modo, account of how its health effects were reflexividad y el fluir de la historia, en el quien lo lee se encuentra con un misunderstood and sensationalized. que se es protagonista de una época y tratamiento sistemático de la economía Campos argues that while there is no observador al mismo tiempo. política centroamericana y de los scientific proof of a link between marijuana profundos cambios que ha experimentado. use and psychosis, in late nineteenth- and El libro narra la historia de tres procesos Las diferencias y divergencias entre los tres early twentieth-century Mexican popular, revolucionarios —El Salvador, Guatemala y países aparecen con nitidez; también los literary, and scientific thought, marijuana Nicaragua— mostrando sus ilusiones y sus temas comunes y las maneras específicas en was believed to produce madness, violence, promesas para luego convertirse en que se manifestaron en cada uno de ellos. disorientation, and disorder in users. This fracasos: son esas “Revoluciones sin Hay algo más, metodológicamente belief in turn laid the foundations for the cambios revolucionarios” a los que alude el importante: se trata de un análisis U.S. war on drugs. Campos establishes the título del libro. Nos muestra que la comparativo, pero como los procesos de los internal Mexican origins of a prohibitionist revolución era necesaria y al mismo tiempo distintos países no son independientes, el urge strong enough to override well- inviable e imposible. Como “espectador libro trabaja simultáneamente los aspectos founded expert attempts to correct activo” de esos procesos, como especialista relacionales, señalando las influencias hysterical misrepresentations. Although the y analista de realidades en flujo, el autor, en mutuas y los procesos globales que afectan contemporary implications are not esto que él mismo define como “ejercicio a toda la región. developed, this history also has personal, de la cuarta edad” se permite una contemporary relevance concerning the reflexión lúcida, introduciendo una La línea central de la argumentación está self-reinforcing and negative consequences perspectiva histórico-temporal donde las centrada en el Estado, sin desconocer el that follow from drug policies not founded coyunturas y las urgencias pueden ser impacto de los factores socioeconómicos y on scientific evidence and not governed by miradas en su devenir de más largo plazo. de clase. Nadie puede dudar del poder de public health principles. los grupos sociales dominantes y las El libro tiene densidad teórica y dialoga oligarquías en América Central, y Torres- con una vasta literatura de las ciencias Rivas es el primero en reconocerlo. sociales. La discusión sobre la relación Habitualmente este reconocimiento va entre historia y sociología, o las unido al supuesto de estados débiles y sin concepciones de la revolución son temas autonomía. Torres-Rivas reconoce el poder planteados directamente en el plano de las fuerzas sociales, pero centra su
58 on lasa2013
atención en el papel de las instituciones y Media Award make Mexican journalism stand for organizaciones políticas, incluyendo de something in these dreadful times. But in manera focal a las fuerzas armadas, que a The Media Award Committee included the face of these risks, the Periodistas have menudo actúan según sus propios intereses William LeoGrande, Chair (American not backed down; they are the kind of y no necesariamente como “brazo armado” University), Alma Guillermoprieto people who ask themselves constantly, “If de las fuerzas sociales dominantes. Por el (journalist), and Karen DeYoung not me, who?” otro lado, al preguntarse sobre las (Washington Post). The following text was motivaciones de la oposición para llevar delivered during presentation of the award Marcela Turati is also a recipient of the adelante la lucha armada y los intentos by Chair William LeoGrande. 2011 Ochberg Fellowship for coverage of revolucionarios, se encuentra con la violence and trauma from the Dart Center ausencia de democracia y la opresión Marcela Turati is exceptional. She is the for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia política, y no solamente con la explotación author of the 2010 book Fuego cruzado: University’s Graduate School of económica y la dominación social. Como Las víctimas atrapadas en la guerra del Journalism; the winner of the 2013 Louis análisis de la política, Torres-Rivas evita narco (Crossfire: Victims Trapped in the M. Lyons Award for Conscience and poner el énfasis en las reglas institucionales Narco-War), about the impact of drug Integrity in Journalism presented by the formales considerando, además, la violence on Mexican society. She writes for Nieman Fellows at Harvard University; interacción de los factores políticos con los Proceso and previously reported for the and the winner of the 2013 Human Rights económicos y sociales. Mexican newspapers Reforma and Award from Washington Office on Latin Excelsior. America. En suma, se trata de un libro teóricamente importante y empíricamente sólido sobre Over the years, at Proceso, she has reported procesos políticos cruciales en una on the Zapatista uprising, government sub-región de América Latina. Sin embargo, scandals, the drug trade, and the efforts of no es —como ya se dijo al comienzo— un campesinos to protect themselves from libro escrito desde un lugar puramente machine-gun-wielding loggers and drug académico. Está inspirado en el traffickers. Although the common element compromiso político personal, lo cual le da in many of these stories is violence, una importancia particular. En sus páginas Marcela has focused her reporting not on están los datos duros, pero también los the sensationalism of that violence but on ideales, utopías y sentimientos de su autor. the human dimension—on the victims of violence and the people who organize En el mundo de LASA, Edelberto Torres- against it. Rivas no necesita introducción. Ganador del Premio Kalman Silvert en 2010, su In 2007, together with a similarly trayectoria de investigación, de docencia y committed group of reporters of her de gestión académica en FLACSO y en generation, she founded an association otras instituciones, en América Central y called Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists on más allá de la región, indican a las claras su Foot). It has become a reference point and ubicación como uno de los grandes a source of hope for journalists throughout intelectuales latinoamericanos. Mexico, organizing workshops and creating a space where besieged reporters can find comfort simply in talking with colleagues facing the same dangers. Marcela and her cohort—including Daniela Rea, Daniela Pastrana, Alberto Najar, and Elia Baltazar, to name a few of the most active participants—have taken real risks to
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LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin scholar. This acumen, in turn, is have taken on meanings beyond their Memorial Lectureship Award and the fundamentally shaped by Varese’s deep, apparent material value. LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin consistent, and principled political Dissertation Award engagement—as ‘witness’ and Lindsay Mayka’s dissertation for her PhD practitioner—with the peoples who have in Political Science at the University of The 2013 Diskin Committee consisted of been his subjects of study.” California, Berkeley, questions the rationale Aldo Panfichi Huamán, Chair (Pontificia that politicians follow when implementing Universidad Católica del Perú), Richard Eight applications were received for the participatory institutions, which, by design, Snyder (Brown University), and Peter Smith Dissertation Award. All of them were from limit politicians’ discretion. Under the title (University of California, San Diego). recently graduated PhDs and six were from “Bringing the Public into Policymaking: women. Most of the dissertations dealt National Participatory Institutions in Latin For the Lectureship Award 15 submissions with Latin American politics and policies, America,” she analyzes and compares the were received—only 4 from women and all and considerations regarding the state and cases of Brazil and Colombia, arguing that from outstanding scholars with committed natural resources, but a small group dealt participatory institutions are doomed activist work that resembles Martin with the Hispanicization of practices and unless they are embedded in a larger policy Diskin’s legacy. In the first stage, the spaces in the United States. Each of the reform. She provocatively concludes that committee prepared individual rankings of committee members selected three top national participatory institutions can help all the nominees, considering academic finalists, considering the academic quality deepen democracy but are destined to fail if contributions, social commitment, and the of the dissertations, their linkage with deepening democracy is the main reason quality of the endorsement received. For contemporary Latin American problems, for their adoption. the second stage the committee defined a and the author’s commitment to the top three final round and by majority solution of social problems in the region. It decided that Professor Stefano Varese was became an utterly difficult assignment as all the selected scholar for this year. the research projects were faultless. In the end, two finalists were elected, and we Professor Panfichi Huamán indicates that couldn’t find any particular distinctiveness his enthusiasm with the selection is also to choose one over the other. In this way, personal, for Varese is one of the most Erica Simmons and Lindsay Mayka became distinguished scholars from the Pontificia this year’s Martin Diskin Dissertation Universidad Católica del Perú, where he Awardees. prepared his bachelor and doctoral dissertations about the Campa indigenous Erica Simmons’s dissertation is entitled people’s ethnohistorical and conflictive “Markets, Movements, and Meanings: process of interaction with the state and Subsistence Resources and Political Protest modernity. This work would later be in Mexico and Bolivia” and was written published as La sal de los cerros, his first for her PhD in Political Science at the groundbreaking contribution to University of Chicago. She examines contemporary anthropology. Charles Hale resistance movements to market-oriented points out in his endorsement letter: “While economic reforms from two case studies: Varese’s contribution in the early ’70s is one over the privatization of water in noteworthy, what is truly remarkable is Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2000, and the that he continued, for the next four other regarding liberalization of Mexican decades, to stand at the forefront of this corn markets in 2007. She contends that rapidly changing field. It is this visionary market-driven threats to subsistence analytical acumen, the ability to shape the resources are a particularly powerful locus field and its future intellectual agenda, for collective action because these resources which makes Varese such an extraordinary
60 Charles A. Hale Fellowship for Mexican Luciano Tomassini Latin American Luciano Tomassini Award Honorable History International Relations Award Mention
The Charles A. Hale Fellowship for The 2013 Luciano Tomassini Latin While books intended as undergraduate Mexican History is awarded to Mexican American International Relations Award texts relatively seldom receive scholarly graduate students in the last phase of Committee consisted of Leslie Elliott prizes, the committee also was impressed doctoral research. The selection committee Armijo, Chair (Portland State University), with Understanding U.S.–Latin American is charged with evaluating proposals based Michael Shifter (Inter-American Dialogue), Relations (Routledge, 2012), by Marc Eric on scholarly merit and “the candidate’s and Juan Gabriel Tokatlian (Universidad Williams. The volume successfully potential contribution to the advancement Torcuato Di Tella). integrates core elements of contemporary of humanist understanding between international relations theory, particularly Mexico and its global neighbors.” This In Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American from a realist perspective, with a briskly year’s selection committee included Javier Cold War (University of North Carolina competent survey of U.S.–Latin American Garciadiego (El Colegio de México), Laura Press, 2011), Tanya Harmer offers the relations from the Spanish American War Gotkowitz (University of Pittsburgh), Eric hitherto underemphasized Cuban, Chilean, through the early twenty-first century. The Van Young (University of California, San Brazilian, and inter-American side of the committee was pleased to extend to Diego), and Richard Warren (Saint Joseph’s story of the election, administration, and Professor Williams honorable mention for University), who served as Chair. overthrow of President Salvador Allende. the Tomassini Award. In this absorbing, compulsively readable The committee chose to give this year’s volume Harmer subtly displays both the award to Irving Reynoso Jaime of the political and the human story, drawing on Universidad Nacional Autónoma de newly available archives and extensive México. Reynoso’s dissertation is entitled interviews with several of the aging “Un estudio del radicalismo campesino: La participants and close observers. The política agraria del Partido Comunista conflicting perceptions, strategies, and Mexicana en los años veinte; La personalities shine through, from Castro’s experiencia latinoamericana más letter to the cautious Allende, which avanzada.” This work builds on a growing follows fulsome praise with the politely historiography of Mexico that adds nuance indirect observation that “someone once and complexity to our understanding of said” that a revolution requires “audacity, relationships among diverse social actors audacity, and more audacity” (142), to U.S. and the emerging state in the aftermath of Secretary of State Rogers’s recommendation the Revolution. In this case, Reynoso that Kissinger “encourag[e] the Chileans to focuses on the histories of radical agrarian do what they should” (54). The volume’s groups in three different regions (Durango, organization manages to be thematic yet Veracruz, and Michoacán) during the mostly chronological, allowing the reader 1920s. Reynoso’s research promises to add to absorb new information and analysis significantly to the ongoing reassessment of without the scholar’s craft impinging Mexico’s postrevolutionary political unnecessarily. It was the committee’s evolution. The work also promises to collective pleasure to select this book for contribute significantly to a broader the Premio Tomassini. understanding of the histories of agrarian movements and communism.
61 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3 on lasa2013 LASA2013 Photos
At the Welcoming Ceremony with Program Co-chairs Gwen Kirkpatrick, Ken Roberts, Plenary Kalman Silvert Awardee Peter Smith with President Evelyne Huber and Committee Chair Speaker José Miguel Insulza, and President Evelyne Huber Maria Hermínia Tavares
Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cummins accepting the Bryce Alvaro Torres Rivas accepting the Premio Iberoamericano Media Award Committee Chair William LeoGrande presenting Wood Book Award from Committee �Chair Laurence on behalf of his father, Edelberto Torres, from Claudio the award to Margarita Torres, accepting on behalf of Whitehead Barrientos on behalf of the Committee Marcela Turati and the Periodistas de a Pie
Diskin Committee Chair Aldo Panfichi Huaman presenting LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Lecturer Stefano Varese with panel the Diskin Dissertation Awards to Lindsay Mayka (center) participant Charles Hale and Committee Chair Aldo Panfichi Huaman and Erica Simmons (left)
62 At the Welcoming Reception
63 lasaforum summer 2013 : volume xliv : issue 3 lasa sections Section News
Asia and the Americas Promoted Dialogue Gender and Feminist Studies and Latin America was also discussed, as were on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Sexualities Studies Sections Pre-Conference challenges faced by attorneys and activists from Latin America working in the areas of The Section for Asia and the Americas A region usually known for its Catholic diversity and reproductive rights in hosted a high-level forum on the Trans- religiosity and patriarchal institutions has contexts characterized not by lack of Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Pacific expanded gender and sexual rights in an legislation but by a disregard of the law Alliance prior to the LASA2013 Congress. unprecedented manner, as we have seen the and by impunity. The second panel It was held at the Inter-American Dialogue enactment of antiviolence and continued this assessment of the challenges in Washington, DC. The forum was antidiscrimination legislation, gay marriage, and limitations of legal activism by entitled “China, Latin America, and the and the world’s most progressive gender examining the entanglements of diverse Changing Architecture of Trans-Pacific identity law. The daylong conference groups with legal discourses of rights, and Engagement” (www.thedialogue.org/the_ “Gender, Sexuality, and Struggles for asking who is protected, how, and under changing_architecture_of_trans-pacific_ Justice in Latin America: Legal, Political, what conditions. A bioethicist from engagement). Funding from the Open and Social Dimensions” held at American Central America opened this discussion Society Institute enabled the event to bring University’s Washington College of Law on with a cautionary tale about the dangers of together four ambassadors from TPP May 29 2013, just prior to the 2013 LASA mobilizations whose diverse demands are countries with key analysts from Latin Congress, brought together 82 legal channeled into single legal issues, and America, the United States, and China. The practitioners, scholars, and activists from called attention to the limitations of event program was coordinated by Adrian the Americas, Europe, and the Washington IACHR as an effective tool in the region. H. Hearn (Chair of the Section for Asia and area to discuss and assess the advances Two feminist activists from the Washington the Americas) and Margaret Myers (the made through legal activism. It was area addressed the particular challenges Inter-American Dialogue). The TPP’s sponsored by the Washington College of faced by Latina LGBT migrants, for whom wide-ranging provisions on private Law Impact Litigation Project and the the transit through Mexico to the United enterprise, human rights, labor standards, American University Center for Latin States is already a nightmare and the and freedom of online data make it American and Latino Studies. This third pursuit of legal remedies in the United impossible in the foreseeable future for collaboration between the Gender and States typically poses insurmountable China to join the negotiations. Several Feminist Studies and the Sexualities cultural and economic problems. A final Chinese newspapers have therefore Sections was a resounding success. presentation addressed the experience of interpreted the TPP as an attempt to Mapuche indigenous women in Chile with exclude China, while a prominent Chinese The discussion about the role of legal the law, and posed the question, what official has stated that the TPP is being activism in the pursuit of social justice and happens when laws meant to protect do used by the United States “as a part of its equity issues was organized around two not protect? Asia Pacific Strategy to contain China.” morning panels and an afternoon International dialogue on the TPP that structured discussion session. The first A spirited structured discussion followed in includes Chinese voices, whether through panel offered an overview of several the afternoon. The limits of legal tools for official or informal channels, has been decades of legal activism, beginning with a social activism were considered by social lacking. Promoting such dialogue was the description of the activities of the Inter- scientists, activists, and legal experts and motivation for the forum. A public press American Commission on Human Rights attorneys in a very fruitful, interdisciplinary conference at the event’s conclusion (IACHR) LGBT rights unit, and exchange. Lawyers warned about the summarized its main themes. Following recognizing the debt owed to feminist common assumption that the law acts like the event Dr. Hearn published an article in activism and scholarship in this field. It a “magic wand”; social scientists from the Australian Financial Review on China’s included discussions about the veritable Central America reminded us that the announcement that it will consider joining boom in dialogic judicial activism on region, now labeled the most violent on the the TPP. same-sex marriage in places like Colombia, planet, is a place where the letter of the law Brazil, and Mexico. Advances in of the Inter-American Commission on reproductive rights and the involvement of Human Rights is simply disregarded. the IACHR to guarantee legal access in Where social struggles are not metaphorical
64 but very concrete, asked one, should we not consider the possibility of activism delictivo, the violation of the law as a legitimate tool?
Our event coincided with the death at the age of 90 of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Holocaust survivor and family doctor whose well-publicized, repeated, and deliberate violations of Canada’s restrictive abortion legislation in the 1970s and 1980s led to a major legal victory on reproductive rights.
The Colonial Section held its first business meeting at LASA2013. Members discussed the prizes the Section will award in the coming years, the publication of our quarterly newsletter, the organization of the Section’s two sponsored panels for LASA2014, and a succession plan for the group’s leadership. The Section celebrated its inaugural reception at the Cosmos Club near Dupont Circle on May 31.
65
Regent University THE ANNUAL RENEWAL THEOLOGY CONFERENCE Center for Renewal Studies Presents Renewal Across the Americas
Conference Plan now to participate in this scholarly conference that seeks to promote research February 28 on the renewing work of the Holy Spirit as it unfolds across the Americas. The - March 1, 2014 forum will foster mutual dialogue among scholars, professionals, and the broader public on the Pentecostal-Charismatic movements in Latin America and among Regent University Latinas/os. Virginia Beach, VA Plenary session leaders include:
Call for Papers Submission Deadline November 30, 2013 Virginia Garrard-Burnett Bernardo Campos Arlene Sánchez-Walsh Juan Sepúlveda University of Texas Pentecostalidad: Revista Azusa Pacific University Servicio Evangélico at Austin Pentecostal de Teología para el Desarrollo (SEPADE)
Register online at regent.edu/renewal-across-americas
The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
The Harvard Academy Scholars Program 2014-2015
The Academy Scholars Program identifies and supports outstanding scholars at the start of their careers whose work combines disciplinary excellence in the social sciences (including history and law) with a command of the language, history, or culture of non-Western countries or regions. Their scholarship may elucidate domestic, comparative, or transnational issues, past or present.
The Academy Scholars are a select community of individuals with resourcefulness, initiative, curiosity, and originality, whose work in non-Western cultures or regions shows promise as a foundation for exceptional careers in major universities or international institutions. Harvard Academy Scholarships are open only to recent PhD (or comparable professional school degree) recipients and doctoral candidates. Those still pursuing a PhD should have completed their routine training and be well along in the writing of their theses before applying to become Academy Scholars; those in possession of a PhD longer than 3 years at the time of application are ineligible.
Academy Scholars are appointed for 2 years by the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and are provided time, guidance, and access to Harvard University facilities. They receive substantial financial and research assistance to undertake sustained projects of research and/or acquire accessory training in their chosen fields and areas. Some teaching is permitted but not required. The Senior Scholars, a distinguished group of senior Harvard University faculty members, act as mentors to the Academy Scholars to help them achieve their intellectual potential.
Post-doctoral Academy Scholars will receive an annual stipend of $65,000, and pre-doctoral Academy Scholars will receive an annual stipend of $31,000. Applications for the 2014-2015 class of Academy Scholars are due by October 1, 2013. Finalist interviews will take place in Cambridge on December 5. Notification of Scholarships will be made in January, 2014. For complete information on how to apply visit: www.wcfia.harvard.edu/academy. 86 Special Issue: Special Issue: Iconic and Emerging Writers & Artists 1 46, Issue Volume May 2013
Review the Americas and Arts of Literature www.tandfonline.com/rrev
. del Mar Logrono Narbona . del Mar Logrono a M And we welcome in 2013-14: Hilary Jones (Africa) Salvatore Ricardo (Latin America) (Mid East) April Merleaux (US; Transnational) Slater Aaron (British Atlantic) Victor Uribe-Urán (Latin America) Chantalle Verna (Haiti; US) Kirsten Wood (US)
up-and-coming program. up-and-coming Become part of a unique, a unique, of part Become
GRADUATE FACULTY GRADUATE N. David Cook (Latin America; Spain) Morcillo Aurora (Spain; Gender) Gwyn Davies (Ancient; Military) Okezi Otovo (Brazil; African Diaspora) Rebecca Friedman (Russia; Europe) Bianca Premo (Latin America) Jenna Gibbs (US; British Atlantic) Pyron Darden (US) Sherry Johnson (Caribbean; Environment) Kenneth Lipartito (US) Atlantic History Ph.D. History Atlantic history.fiu.edu/graduate/doctorate-atlantic-history The Latin American Studies Association (LASA) is the largest professional association in the world for individuals and institutions engaged in the study of Latin America. With over 7,500 members, thirty-five percent of whom reside outside the United States, LASA is the one association that brings together experts on Latin America from all disciplines and diverse occupational endeavors, across the globe. LASA’s mission is to foster intellectual discussion, research, and teaching on Latin America, the Caribbean, and its people throughout the Americas, promote the interests of its diverse membership, and encourage civic engagement through network building and public debate. 416 Bellefield Hall University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260
lasa.international.pitt.edu