Latin American Studies Association

fWINTER 2009o| VOLUME XL | ISSUErum1 IN THIS ISSUE

On the Profession ¿De qué cine hablamos? Las tareas de los Estudios del Cine Latinoamericano por CLAUDIA FERMAN Estudos de Cinema na Universidade Brasileira por FERNÃO PESSOA RAMOS Películas de papel: Cartografía del estudio del cine de América Latina por GUSTAVO A. REMEDI Latin American Cinema and Latin American Studies by KATHLEEN NEWMAN Latin American Film Scholarship in the UK Mapping the Field by JOHN KING

Debates Inequality in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies Introduction by CYNTHIA STEELE Against (In)equality Bad Latin American Literature by JON BEASLEY-MURRAY Overcoming Colonialism Writing in Indigenous Languages by JEAN FRANCO Inscriptions of Inequality in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies by IDELBER AVELAR Perspectivas eco-críticas latinoamericanas Conocimientos transpuestos recuperados por ILEANA RODRÍGUEZ ¿Existe un giro neoconservador en Latinoamérica hoy? por JOHN BEVERLEY Notes Toward an Aesthetics of Marginality in Contemporary Latin American Literature by LUZ HORNE and DANIEL NOEMI VOIONMAA President Eric Hershberg, Simon Fraser University [email protected]

Vice President John Coatsworth, Columbia University [email protected]

Past President Charles R. Hale, University of Texas, Austin [email protected] Table of Contents Treasurer Kevin Middlebrook, University of London [email protected]

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL 1 Alfred C. Stepan | Recipient of Kalman Silvert Award for 2009 For term ending April 2009 2 From the President | by ERIC HERSHBERG Ariel Armony, Colby College Guillermo Delgado, University of California/Santa Cruz José Rabasa, University of California/Berkeley ON THE PROFESSION For term ending October 2010 5 ¿De qué cine hablamos? Las tareas de los Estudios del Cine Latinoamericano Jonathan Hartlyn, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill por CLAUDIA FERMAN Teresa Valdés, Center for the Study and Development of Women (CEDEM), Chile 7 Estudos de Cinema na Universidade Brasileira | por FERNÃO PESSOA RAMOS Deborah Yashar, Princeton University

9 Películas de papel: Cartografía del estudio del cine de América Latina Ex Officio por GUSTAVO A. REMEDI Evelyne Huber, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Cynthia Steele, University of Washington, Seattle 10 Latin American Cinema and Latin American Studies | by KATHLEEN NEWMAN Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh Philip Oxhorn, McGill University 16 Latin American Film Scholarship in the UK: Mapping the Field | by JOHN KING FORUM EDITORIAL COMMITTEE DEBATES Editor Eric Hershberg, Simon Fraser University Inequality in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies Associate Editor 19 Introduction | by CYNTHIA STEELE Antonio Sérgio A. Guimarães, Universidade de São Paulo

20 Against (In)equality: Bad Latin American Literature | by JON BEASLEY-MURRAY Managing Editor Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh 24 Overcoming Colonialism: Writing in Indigenous Languages | by JEAN FRANCO 27 Inscriptions of Inequality in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies FORUM EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE by IDELBER AVELAR Carlos Iván Degregori, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos Katherine Hite, Vassar College 30 Perspectivas eco-críticas latinoamericanas: Conocimientos transpuestos Hilda Sábato, Universidad de Buenos Aires recuperados | por ILEANA RODRÍGUEZ LASA STAFF 33 ¿Existe un giro neoconservador en Latinoamérica hoy? | por JOHN BEVERLEY Membership Coordinator 36 Notes Toward an Aesthetics of Marginality in Contemporary Jenna B. Bielewicz, University of Pittsburgh Latin American Literature | by LUZ HORNE and DANIEL NOEMI VOIONMAA Congress Coordinator Melissa A. Raslevich, University of Pittsburgh ON LASA2009 Assistant Director for Institutional Advancement Sandra Klinzing, University of Pittsburgh 41 Report from the Program Chairs | by EVELYNE HUBER and CYNTHIA STEELE Executive Director 42 Rio de Janeiro | por KARL ERIK SCHØLLHAMMER Milagros Pereyra-Rojas, University of Pittsburgh

Administrative Coordinator NEWS FROM LASA Israel R. Perlov, University of Pittsburgh

47 LASA Voluntary Support | by SANDY KLINZING The LASA Forum is published four times a year. It is the official vehicle for conveying news about the Latin LASA SECTIONS American Studies Association to its members. Articles appearing in the On the Profession and Debates sections 50 Section News of the Forum are commissioned by the Editorial Committee and deal with selected themes. The Committee welcomes responses to any material published in the Forum. PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL NOTES Opinions expressed herein are those of individual authors 51 In Memoriam | DONNA LEE VAN COTT and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Latin American Studies Association or its officers.

ISSN 0890-7218 SPECIAL RECOGNITION Alfred C. Stepan Recipient of the Kalman Silvert Award for 2009

Alfred Stepan is the Wallace S. Sayre generally, authoring Rethinking Military Professor of Government at the School of Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone International and Public Affairs and the (Princeton University Press, 1988) and Department of Political Science at Columbia editing Democratizing Brazil: Problems of University. He is also the Founder and Transition and Consolidation (Oxford Director of the Center for the Study of University Press, 1989). As the titles suggest, on the National Executive Committee of the Democracy, Tolerance and Religion at the conditions supporting the establishment human rights organization Americas Watch Columbia, a Fellow of the American and preservation of democracy as a form of (1982-1994). In 1981-1982 he was a Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the government securing peaceful resolution of member of Rev. Theodore Hesburgh’s British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St conflicts and coexistence of different ethnic advisory group to design the Kellogg Antony’s College at Oxford University, and a groups and religions have been the Institute for International Studies at the holder of the Ordem do Rio Branco, intellectual puzzle driving the research. University of Notre Dame, and later he Commendador, awarded by the Brazilian Beginning with The State and Society, served for a dozen years on the Advisory Government in 2002. He received his B.A. Stepan’s work has profoundly shaped the Board of the Institute. from the University of Notre Dame, a B.A. agenda of scholars interested in the nature of and M.A. from Balliol College, Oxford, in the state and the role of political institutions Among the many important roles Stepan has Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and a proper in shaping regime forms and in the played, the role of mentor figures Ph.D. from Columbia University in Political role of the military in politics. prominently. He has served on no fewer Science. than forty Ph.D. dissertation committees, Before going to Columbia University in well more than half related to Latin His many books and articles have made him 1999, Stepan taught at Yale (1970-83) where America. His message to his students has a leading figure among scholars studying he chaired the Council on Latin American been consistent: “You are writing this Latin American politics as well as those Studies (1972-1981, except when on leave); dissertation not for yourself and the studying comparative politics more broadly. he served as Dean of the School of committee—you are writing a book!” His first book, The Military in Politics: International and Public Affairs at Columbia Indeed, at least twenty-five of the Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton (1983-1991) and as first Rector and dissertations have been published as books, University Press, 1971) was followed by The President of the Central European University and more are on the way to publication. State and Society: Peru in Comparative and Member of the Board of Directors of the Colleagues and students, both present and Perspective (Princeton 1978). His Soros Open Society Foundation (1993-96); former, from Latin America, the United collaboration with Juan Linz, who was his and he was the Gladstone Professor of States, Europe, and elsewhere, have always professor at Columbia and then a colleague Government and Fellow at All Souls College, played central roles as intellectual partners at Yale, has lasted into the present and University of Oxford (1996-1999). He has for Stepan—members of his invisible colleges produced the path breaking volumes The been the recipient of numerous fellowships that span continents and decades. His Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Johns and research grants from organizations such enthusiasm for the study of politics, and his Hopkins 1978) and Problems of Democratic as the Ford Foundation, Carnegie conviction that knowledge can have Transition and Consolidation: Southern Corporation of New York, Guggenheim important practical implications have Europe, South America and Post- Foundation, and the Social Science Research inspired generations of scholars. Communist Europe (Johns Hopkins, Council. He has lectured at more than 150 1996)—now translated into about a dozen institutions in approximately 30 countries The long interview in Passion, Craft, and languages including Farsi, Chinese, Croatian around the globe. He has lent his seemingly Method in Comparative Politics, by Gerardo and Basa-Indonesian. Their latest opus, boundless energy to many professional and L. Munck and Richard Snyder (Johns Democracy and Multinational Societies: public service projects. Among them are the Hopkins University Press, 2007) illustrates India and Other Polities (with Yogendra Annenberg/ WGBH 10-hour TV Series well the way in which Stepan thinks about Yadav), is forthcoming with Johns Hopkins entitled “Americas,” which took some seven his invisible colleges and about his passion University Press. At the same time, Stepan years to complete, won two awards, and for political science and public affairs, which continued to write on Brazilian politics and remains a great teaching tool for classes on he passes on to his students. In response to the role of the military in politics more Latin America. He served for a dozen years

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President’s Report

by ERIC HERSHBERG | Simon Fraser University | [email protected] SILVERT AWARD continued…

the question how he manages to spend time As in so many other domains, the measures will be required in order to take in the field despite the many personal and performance of the Bush administration with advantage of this potentially watershed professional obligations, he observed that regard to Latin America can only be moment. The U.S. government could get “...e-mails back and forth to members of all characterized as irresponsible. Relations things off to a fresh start by signaling a my ‘invisible colleges’ make it easier with Cuba and several Andean countries commitment to normalize relations with ....Fieldwork does not just happen in the deteriorated; meddling in domestic affairs of Cuba, enacting comprehensive immigration field. I sometimes feel that some of my best sovereign, democratic states was widespread; reform, and ceasing efforts by U.S. embassies fieldwork happens over a long dinner at my strategies for enhancing economic and government-supported entities to home, when someone is visiting and we have cooperation were limited to the pursuit of influence domestic political dynamics in time for a four-hour conversation” (p.431). bilateral trade accords of dubious Latin American countries. An additional When asked about the role of normative consequences for vulnerable sectors of the priority should be to re-orient narcotics values in his work and engagement with population in the region; counter-narcotics control and development assistance public affairs, he responded: “I have always policy was carried out overwhelmingly in programs from a military to a chosen to work on problems that affect a lot military terms; and by loading development developmentalist paradigm. of people. I never understood the argument assistance programs with military aid the that social science should be value-free....It is United States abdicated its responsibility as a The June 2009 LASA Congress will afford a difficult to find a problem you care wealthy nation to provide aid designed to timely space for exploring how these and passionately about if you don’t allow your advance social welfare in highly unequal other objectives can be met through values to influence your decision about what societies. The failure to enact comprehensive concerted actions by governments and civil is important to study....I have always been immigration reform adversely affected many society organizations throughout the much more interested in doing what I want countries in the region. Meanwhile, Americas. Leading scholars from around the by myself, rather than working for an administration policies not directly aimed at world will have occasion to debate priorities administration. On the other hand...I have Latin America—such as the illegal detention and the means for achieving them. That the even been willing to insert myself into of putative terrorists at the U.S. military meeting of a still predominantly U.S.-based complex situations when I feel I have an installation at Guantanamo—seriously Association will take place in Rio de Janeiro analytic edge, and think I can also learn undermined our country’s reputation is symbolic of the imperative for such something, and make a useful contribution. throughout the region as in other parts of discussions to incorporate voices from the In this sense, my fieldwork and my political the world. Largely as a result, U.S. influence South as well as from the North. involvement feed on each other....If I can in the region arguably reached an all time contribute something because I have an idea low. I hope that representatives of the new about a particular public problem, I am administration in Washington will look to willing to commit myself, as I have often The advent of a new administration in the Association and its membership for done for human rights issues” (p. 437). Washington opens the possibility for insights, and that they will increase federal Hemispheric cooperation based on principles support for the international studies training Professor Stepan will participate in the of mutual respect and reciprocity. Public that is crucial to the maintenance of Silvert panel session at the XXVIII Congress opinion in Latin America is cautiously scholarly expertise about Latin America and of the Latin American Studies Association optimistic about the prospects for more other regions of the world. The knowledge on Friday, June 12, 2009, in Rio de Janeiro. equal partnerships with the United States of researchers in American universities is a More details will be in the final program under an Obama administration. The precious resource, and one that should not booklet. election of an African-American candidate to be ignored by policy-makers, as has so often the Presidency offers a rare opportunity, been the case in the past. Whether we see a moreover, to restore valorizations of greater openness than in the past to scholarly American democracy that were tarnished by perspectives, and a desire to expand the Supreme Court’s settlement of the understanding of peoples and cultures contested Bush-Gore election of 2000 and outside U.S. borders, will tell us much about the behavior of the U.S. government in the whether the new administration is truly so-called War on Terror. But concrete committed to inviting fresh perspectives on

2 that directly involve our roles as researchers My LASA-related efforts over the past and educators. several months have been focused largely on preparations for the Rio Congress. In a * * * previous note in the Forum I stated, erroneously, that this would be the first This and the four preceding issues of the LASA Congress held at a University. As U.S. policy toward the region and on the key Forum have featured debates about a variety several colleagues with first-hand memories challenges that Latin America faces as it of issues relating to inequalities, a theme that of LASA’s initial years pointed out to me, a continues to strive for equitable development the program co-chairs and I articulated as number of the Association’s early Congresses and cooperative ties to the United States. central to the 2009 meeting. We have were held on American campuses. At that dedicated sections to discussions of race, point in our history the meetings involved Sentiments similar to these were conveyed in gender, labor and education, and the next hundreds of scholars rather than thousands, an open letter sent to then-Senator Barack issue, which will arrive just after the June and one of the principal challenges we face Obama during the closing days of the Congress in Rio and will be the last of my in Rio is managing a volume of participation electoral campaign. In it, more than 300 presidency, will contain a scholarly debates that is unprecedented. We anticipate that as scholars specializing on Latin America, section devoted to violence and inequalities. many as 8,000 people will register for the including myself and a number of LASA past All of these have been crafted in hopes of meeting, well above the 5,500 who took part Presidents, called on Obama to extend his engaging the core topic of the upcoming in our largest event to date, the 2007 agenda for “change” to the realm of U.S. meeting. But of course that Congress will Congress in Montreal. Above and beyond Latin America policy, and to understand that encompass work on countless other issues, the logistical question of where to lodge so many of the injustices that his candidacy and this is as it should be: the Congress is many people and how to transport them sought to address were analogous to those meant to provide a venue for scholarship from hotels to the Catholic University— that have motivated processes of political across the social sciences and humanities— challenges that we believe we have resolved renewal throughout the Americas, including and beyond—regardless of its thematic thanks to the tireless efforts of LASA’s in countries which the Bush administration focus. Throughout my period of service to remarkably capable Secretariat staff and of had treated in a confrontational manner. I LASA, I have sought to ensure that my own our local organizing committee—we have believe that the letter captured the views of a intellectual agenda does not take precedence struggled with numerous other challenges broad cross-section of the Latin Americanist over that of the membership, for it is the relating to the size and venue of the meeting. community in the United States, and I wish latter that must drive the agenda of our Let me note three of these that I believe will to extend my thanks to Professor Arturo Congresses. And that pluralism should be be of particular interest. Escobar of the University of North Carolina- reflected in the Forum as well. Thus, we Chapel Hill for taking the initiative to draft have chosen for this issue of the Forum to First, as I have noted in previous issues of it and to recruit an impressive array of depart from the theme of inequalities and to the Forum, the growth in numbers carries signatories. However, it is important for me share with our readers contributions with it a growth in the demand for travel to emphasize that, contrary to some analyzing contemporary debates in literary funding. LASA has steadily increased the portrayals on the web, where the letter analysis and, in the On the Profession level of resources allocated to this end, circulated like wildfire, this was not a section, reviewing developments in film focusing on the needs of researchers based in communication from LASA as an institution: studies. I wish to acknowledge here the Latin America and of graduate students from many of our members may well hold assistance of Professors Cynthia Steele, of around the world. I am pleased to report differing views, and it is not for me as the University of Washington, and Claudia that despite the adverse economic climate we President to speak on their behalf on such Ferman, of the University of Richmond, in have managed to raise funds to award an matters. For the LASA President to take recruiting authors to contribute to this unprecedented number of travel grants. Still, advantage of the bully pulpit is to my mind discussion and in introducing their essays. given the disjuncture between rapidly fully appropriate, but throughout my period growing demand and slowly increasing of service I have spoken on behalf of the * * * funding levels, we are able to support an Association only with regard to concerns ever smaller percentage of all requests. This simply highlights the imperative that

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PRESIDENT’S REPORT continued…

members seek alternative means of financing able to attend the Congress as a result of Congress will be held in Toronto (October 6- their participation in this and future LASA their proposals having been rejected. But 9, 2010) will reduce the transportation costs Congresses. It is neither practical nor decisions were made through a peer review incurred by North American publishers, and reasonable to expect that LASA can fill this process that, however imperfect, corresponds we will arrange (as we had managed to do need. Moreover, funding for travel is, in my assessment to best practice in our for Rio) to ease customs procedures for unfortunately, uneven across Congress profession, and I see no other way for the publishers transporting books across tracks, because some of the grants we receive Association to do its work. Constructive borders. Looking further ahead, my strong are track specific. For example, the Open and practicable suggestions would be most personal preference is for the next Congress, Society Institute will support travel for welcome, as I am certain that my successors slated tentatively for March 2011, to take participants in panels on Citizenship, Rights will be compelled to grapple with this place once again in the United States. and Social Justice, Political Institutions and difficult problem for the foreseeable future. Whether this comes about will depend in Processes, Politics and Public Policy, and part on how U.S. visa policies evolve under Parties and Elections; the Tinker Foundation Finally, I wish to alert the membership to an the new administration, but I am cautiously has provided funds for Crossborder Studies important downside to our decision to meet optimistic that we will see a reversal of the and Migration, Law, Jurisprudence and in South America, specifically our inability Bush-era policies that, beginning with the Society, Economics and Development, to organize a book exhibit at the Rio decision to move the 2007 Congress from Development and Regional Alternatives, Congress. Beginning well before I was Boston to Montreal, dissuaded us from and Violence and (in)security; and the Inter- involved in LASA governance, several U.S.- holding our meetings in the United States. American Foundation has provided funds based book publishers made clear their Here is another instance in which the for Afro-Latin and Indigenous Peoples, displeasure with the decision to hold willingness of a new administration to pay Crossborder Studies and Migration, meetings outside of the United States, as this heed to the judgments of the scholarly Development and Regional Alternatives, and imposed significant burdens on them, community would have a salutary impact on Economics and Development. Our newest including transport costs and potential Hemispheric relations. source of support, the Mellon-LASA seminar customs difficulties. As planning for the program, will fund participants in eight Congress evolved, it became clear that most panels at the Rio Congress, drawn from would choose not to attend. My hope was 1 Our current plan, which is still being refined, five different tracks: Histories and that their absence would be compensated in is to open the Mellon program to all tracks Historiographies, International Relations, part by an unprecedented presence of Latin and to the Sections in future years, and to support 15-20 panels per Congress. In Culture, Power, and Political Subjectivities, American publishers, who after all had for addition, a second component of the Mellon Literary Studies: Contemporary, and Labor many years attended our meetings held in initiative, grant support for research 1 Studies and Class Relations. North America. In the end, however, and workshops to take place between Congresses, despite concerted efforts by the Secretariat, will get underway soon after the Rio Congress, Second, to again revisit a topic addressed in virtually no publishers signed up to take part when we will issue to the membership a call previous issues of the Forum, when there is in the exhibit. Faced with the prospect of for proposals, with applications to be selected growing demand but a limited number of spending $50,000 on construction of exhibit based on a peer review competition. Details days for the Congress and a finite number of space that appeared likely to be empty, we on this will be announced in the next issue of meeting rooms, there is no alternative but to were compelled to cancel this key the Forum. A description of the Mellon increase the rate of rejection of both paper component of the Congress. I deeply regret Program was provided in my statement to the membership in the Fall 2008 issue of the and panel proposals. this, but countless hours were expended Forum. trying to come up with a feasible solution, This year more than 899 individuals and and I am convinced that we had no 230 sessions, 28 and 20 percent of the total alternative but to take the decision that we submissions respectively, were notified that did. their proposals were not accepted. I recognize the disappointment this causes, I am optimistic that this will be a one-time and deeply regret that quite a few scholars problem, and will do all that I can to ensure whose work I value immensely may not be that it not occur again. That the next

4 ON THE PROFESSION

¿De qué cine hablamos? Las tareas de los Estudios del Cine Latinoamericano por Claudia Ferman | University of Richmond | [email protected]

La introducción a este grupo de trabajos en requieren entonces una definición de su momento las estadísticas sobre “el cine los que se abordan los desarrollos recientes objeto “amplia y sin preconceptos” (Pessoa) latinoamericano” para internarse en la en los estudios del cine comienza con la que permita incluir la enorme variedad de la abigarrada selva de la revolución mediática pregunta acerca del objeto de ese estudio, es producción en lenguaje cinematográfico que en Latinoamérica que está teniendo lugar decir, de qué cine hablamos (o debemos está teniendo lugar hoy en Latinoamérica: muchas veces a espaldas de las salas de hablar) cuando se piensa el cine desde el cine industrial, comercial, hasta el exhibición y las universidades. Precisamente, latinoamericano. Los trabajos que siguen cine de comunicación indígena (del que nos Remedi nos alerta de ciertos marcos post- basan su discusión en el reconocimiento de ocuparemos con más detención en un nacionalistas y post-políticos con los que se que la expresión cinematográfica momento); desde el documental de autor, pretende discutir la producción reciente latinoamericana se ha multiplicado hasta la producción fotográfica y fílmica desligándola de los procesos sociales y exponencialmente (Remedi) y que, gracias a como recurso de investigación académica, culturales nacionales (o comunitarios), e nuevas tecnologías tanto de producción pasando por la producción de los imprimiendo otra agendas críticas, cuyo peor (digital) como de reproducción (DVD), así Indymedia, o el video de arte. pecado es simplemente desconocer y no como a políticas más decididas por parte de poder interpretar estas producciones. algunos gobiernos nacionales del continente, Es decir, las graves condiciones de el cine latinoamericano ha llegado en la dependencia en las que nació y se ha venido Para llevar esta discusión a terrenos más última década a un público internacional desarrollando el cine en Latinoamérica, hoy concretos, vamos a referirnos brevemente al más amplio (King). Sin embargo, como se ven desbordadas por la generación de CEFREC (Centro de Formación y apunta Pessoa, los estudios del cine son nuevas lógicas productivas, en las que las Realización Cinematográfica), proyecto que todavía un área académica “en busca de prácticas técnicas, estéticas y de mercado se encabeza Iván Sanjinés, como una muestra reconocimiento” en cualquiera de los desarrollan en direcciones múltiples y con paradigmática de los movimientos que se ámbitos académicos a los que se hace racionalidades diferentes. Como apunta desarrollan fuera del cine industrial. El referencia en esta sección. Esto se Remedi, “de la mano de las movilizaciones CEFREC, cuyos pasos iniciales se remontan comprueba en la gran dispersión de los sociales y políticas” se está produciendo un a 1985, cuando se crea CLACPI en México,1 programas dedicados a su estudio: desde los cine latinoamericano que una vez que trabaja en la capacitación de comunicadores, departamentos de lenguas hasta las cumple con los objetivos de comunicación y y la producción de cine, radio y televisión;2 facultades de arte, los programas de cine movilización que le son internos a las su objetivo es consolidar un Sistema latinoamericano se acuartelan donde las comunidades que lo producen, recorren Nacional de Comunicación Originaria en lógicas de los sistemas académicos les han festivales, ganan premiso internacionales, y Bolivia.3 Esta escuela ha logrado asentar permitido encontrar un espacio (Newman). crean sus propios circuitos de difusión. una metodología de capacitación en comunicación cinética, con la que forma a La afirmación de que existe hoy una Como señala King, la revolución digital ha miembros elegidos por las distintas multiplicación de la producción tenido un impacto comprobable en cuanto a comunidades indígenas sin limitación etaria, cinematográfica en el ámbito la difusión y el acceso a la producción de género, o de educación previa (no se latinoamericano tiene decididas implicancias cinematográfica más reciente, pero cabe requiere que los participantes de los talleres metodológicas. Indica que, como propone también preguntarse en qué medida ha estén alfabetizados). El presupuesto es que Pessoa, no sólo se trata de considerar el cine afectado la naturaleza misma del producto la comunicación es un derecho, y que los industrial, en soporte fílmico (16mm ó cinético, los paradigmas de su constitución indígenas bolivianos tiene ya un legado, una 35mm), i.e. el cine de ficción, para el que como objeto comunicativo. Estas nuevas serie de formas de expresión y de existe una tradición crítica de consistencia, expresiones constituyen muchas veces comunicación desde su cultura que son la sino que se trata de considerar el vasto tendencias colectivas de gran impacto social base sobre las que se puede desarrollar las espacio del campo del cine, en el que se y cultural en sus propios medios, y muchas propias formas narrativas y de expresión inscriben productos de muy distinto veces fuera de ellos, y por tanto deberían audiovisual. El CEFREC impulsa formas de formato, en distintos soportes, fruto de necesariamente afectar los acercamiento realización que enfatizan lo colectivo, y la distintos objetivos y métodos de producción, metodológicos a esa producción responsabilidad de los comunicadores frente que tienen en común la “forma narrativa multifacética y prácticamente ubicua. El/la a su comunidad.4 La comunicación se cinematográfica”. Los “estudios del cine” investigador/a hoy debería olvidar por un conceptualiza como un medio que permite

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FERMAN continued…

invertir la valores de la sociedad colonial, estos artefactos.7 Podríamos conjeturar que A pesar de estas iniciativas en el área de las jerárquica, y construir sociedades más estamos frente a un “cine artesanal”, no comunicaciones, la crucial problemática del equitativas, más igualitarias.5 No se puede solamente por los modos de producción de archivo y acceso (como prefiero denominar a entender en toda su dimensión los procesos este cine, sino por el cambio en la distancia lo que también se designa como que hoy está viviendo Bolivia, si no se pone relativa entre productores y producto: el “preservación” y “distribución” o especial atención al movimiento de grupo realizador (coordinadores, editores, “difusión”) discutida con precisión por comunicadores indígenas, en su asociación actores, etc.) no sólo no mantiene roles fijos Newman, son, como apunta King, “los con los procesos políticos actuales. sino que no necesariamente ingresa al problemas permanentes del campo”, pero sistema profesionalizado. Se trata de un/a también los problemas permanentes para las Indudablemente, estos proyectos son comunicador/a “artesano/a”, no “moderno”, propias comunidades latinoamericanas. No herederos, por una parte, de las propuestas que resiste la profesionalización porque ve faltan aquí algunas buenas noticias, como las de Jean Rouch, y por otra, del “cine minero” en ella el fin de la posibilidad de comunicar. que se apuntan en los artículos que siguen, y de Jorge Sanjinés, de los debates aunque necesariamente son aisladas e impulsados desde las distintas corrientes del Estas nuevas metodologías y nuevos insuficientes: los proyectos de acervo y Nuevo Cine latinoamericano, y de algunas productos están asociados con un cambio en distribución como los citados, o el proyecto propuestas de capacitación en cine del INI el equilibrio de los actores políticos en el de la UNESCO con la Fundación del Nuevo (Instituto Nacional Indigenista) en México. espacio latinoamericano, y en consonancia Cine Latinoamericano; Native Networks, Hoy, el movimiento de cine de los con activas políticas comunicacionales de los dependiente del National Museum of the comunicadores indígenas se interesa estados. Por ejemplo, las iniciativas de American Indian, Smithsonian); o los especialmente por la ficción, y son canales nacionales o cadenas transnacionales proyectos de información en páginas y precisamente estas producciones las que han que constituyen parte integrante de políticas revistas en Internet, aunque en general recorrido los festivales internacionales y de comunicación independientes, educativas, cubren aspectos de bastante inmediatez. cosechado premios.6 de alcance nacional o continental, tales como el canal de la UNAM (TVUNAM), México; Una iniciativa más abarcadora es la de las Similares presupuestos, aunque no idénticos, el canal Encuentro, dependiente del plataforma Docfera. Cito sus objetivos: encontramos en el proyecto de Video Nas Ministerio de Educación, y el Canal 7 “Docfera es un proyecto cultural y educativo Aldeias coordinado por Vincent Carelli y (Argentina); así como la vigorosa cadena que tiene como misión convertirse en la Mari Corrêa en comunidades aborígenes del Telesur (Venezuela). Estos medios primera plataforma web y archivo digital de Brasil. También se debe mencionar aquí al promueven, financian y transmiten Documentales Latinoamericanos más trabajo de Promedios / Chiapas Media programación de gestión latinoamericana. Si importante del mundo”. Precisamente, en el Project, basado en México y Estados Unidos. las salas de cine continúan cerradas a gran marco del Festival de LASA2009 en Río de No hay lugar aquí para explayarnos sobre la parte de la producción independiente Janeiro, la fundadora y directora de este producción de estas organizaciones: los latinoamericana, a pesar de las progresivas proyecto, Andrea Hirsch, hará una participantes del Congreso de LASA2009 políticas de cuotas que han implementado presentación del proyecto. tendrán la oportunidad de ver producciones muchos países,8 estos nuevos canales de estas organizaciones y escuchar a Iván constituyen una ventana a la multifacética Los canales comunicativos son verdaderos Sanjinés (CEFREC-CAIB), y a Vincent nueva producción. Acceso a estas señales campos de batalla cultural, de importancia Carelli (Video Nas Aldeias), en esta edición permitiría a los/las investigadores/as una estratégica, y no necesariamente una cuestión del Festival. Lo que nos interesa destacar es aproximación muchas veces más cercana a “exterior” a la labor académica. Así como que estas producciones surgen de propuestas, los fenómenos culturales, artísticos y las bibliotecas no son extrínsecas a la tarea metodologías de trabajo y técnicas de comunicativos que se están dando hoy en educativa, tampoco pueden serlo el debate producción innovadoras, que están Latinoamérica en relación con el cine que de las políticas comunicacionales y la impactando la naturaleza misma de la forma aquella que se puede extraer de los DVDs de implementación de archivos y acerbos del “cine”, y los modelos de comunicación que distribución comercial internacional, como cine latinoamericano. este “cine” establece: el mismo término certeramente apuntan King y Remedi.9 “público” no resulta ya descriptivo de las comunidades de recepción-producción de

6 ON THE PROFESSION

Estudos de Cinema na Universidade Brasileira

por FERNÃO PESSOA RAMOS | Universidade Estadual de Campinas | [email protected]

Notes Estudos de Cinema é ainda uma área Universidades particulares como Anhembi- acadêmica em busca de reconhecimento. Morumbi, UNISINOS, FAAP, Universidade 1 La Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Cine y No caso brasileiro, a área de conhecimento Católica de Pernambuco, SENAC, mantêm Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas ‘Cinema’, para órgãos de fomento à pesquisa cursos de especialização ou mestrado stricto (CLACPI) es una entidad formada por como o CNPQ (Conselho Nacional de senso em cinema. diecinueve organizaciones de diez países Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico), (Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, México, Perú y situa-se no campo das ‘Artes’, embora Algumas questões metodológicas devem ser Venezuela). historicamente tenha se vinculado a mencionadas ao traçarmos a inserção Departamentos e Sociedades Científicas da institucional dos Estudos de Cinema na 2 El CEFREC tiene un convenio con la cadena área de ‘Comunicação’. Assessores em universidade brasileira. O campo coloca-se de Televisión Boliviana, y produce dos ‘Artes’ muitas vezes não possuem de forma abrangente dentro de programas semanales de televisión “Entre familiaridade com projetos de pesquisa em Departamentos de Artes e Comunicações, Culturas” y “Bolivia Constituyente”. Cinema, que acabam transferidos para possuindo a particularidade da demanda de ‘Comunicação’. A situação reflete-se formação prática. Uma boa parcela de 3 Los conceptos sobre la tarea del CEFREC igualmente na composição de cursos e alunos que entram em cursos de cinema tem provienen de entrevistas personales con Iván currículos, em geral carregados de disciplinas interesse em aprender a fazer cinema: utilizar Sanjinés (coordinador general), Milton Guzmán Gironda (cineasta y capacitador), y próximas ao campo da ‘Comunicação’, com uma câmera, dirigir, produzir, atuar, César Pérez (fotógrafo y capacitador), todos pouca incidência de disciplinas como fotografar, montar, sonorizar, fazer roteiros, ellos pertenecientes a CEFREC-CAIB; y Santos História da Arte, Teoria Literária, História etc. A maior parte dos cursos de graduação, Callejas (director de la Casa Juvenil de las do Teatro, Antropologia Visual. no Brasil e no mundo, encontra-se Culturas Wayna Tambo, El Alto). predominantemente voltada para este Temos hoje cursos de Cinema, ou de Cinema público, sendo ministrada por professores 4 Los comunicadores se agrupan a su vez en el e Audiovisual, nas principais universidades com carreira profissional na produção CAIB (Coordinadora Audiovisual Indígena de do país, com uma expansão nos últimos dez cinematográfica. No currículo, Bolivia). anos. O curso de Cinema pioneiro no Brasil acessoriamente, está presente uma série de é o da Escola de Comunicações e Artes da disciplinas envolvendo história e teoria do 5 Recientemente, Gabriela Zamorano completó un libro sobre la experiencia del CEFREC: El USP, seguido pelo da Universidade de cinema. Predominantemente, cursos em camino de nuestra imagen. Un proceso de Brasília e pela Universidade Federal Estudos de Cinema encontram-se voltados Comunicación Indígena. La Paz: CEFREC- Fluminense. A universidade particular FAAP para a pós-graduação. CAIB, 2008. (São Paulo) também mantém, desde da década de 60, um curso pioneiro. Nos A área de Estudos de Cinema envolve um 6 Por ejemplo, en el legendario festival Taos últimos dez anos, cursos de cinema têm conjunto de expressões audiovisuais, mais ou Talking Pictures (Arizona), y en el Festival de proliferado pelo Brasil. Universidades como menos articuladas em dimensão narrativa, a Toronto. UNICAMP; Universidade Vale do Rio dos partir de uma miríade de estilos. Cinema é Sinos (Rio Grande do Sul); PUC/RGS; antes de tudo uma ‘forma narrativa’ (em 7 El Festival y Muestra de cine de LASA se ha Universidade Católica de Recife; UFSC; seus primeiros tempos, e em alguns trabalhos esforzado permanentemente por presentar una muestra lo más extendida posible de las UFMG; Universidade Federal de São Carlos, de vanguarda, também ‘espetacular’) que distintas tendencias que se están desarrollando SENAC e Anhembi-Morumbi, possuem envolve imagens em movimento (em sua en la región. Departamentos oferecendo formação em maioria conformadas pela forma da câmera) cinema. Cursos particulares de cinema e e sons. Nas extremidades da definição do 8 Para un análisis preciso de este fenómeno, ver audiovisual tiveram forte incremento nos campo cinematográfico encontramos Rovito, Pablo y Julio Raffo. “El mercado y la últimos dez anos, tanto em São Paulo, como animações digitais, trabalhos experimentais política cinematográficos.” En Industrias no Rio de Janeiro. Na pós-graduação, são plásticos em proximidade com a vídeoarte, culturales: mercado y políticas públicas en oferecidos diplomas de mestrado e ou narrativas extensas que cotejam novelas Argentina. Buenos Aires: Edic. Ciccus, 2003. doutorado com orientação em Cinema, em ou mini-séries televisivas. A narrativa com programas da USP, UNICAMP e UFF, imagens e sons pode ter um corte ‘ficcional’ 9 Este recurso no resuelve, sin embargo, el complejo problema de la subtitulación. UFSCAR e também UFRJ e UNB. (quando entretemos o espectador com

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hipóteses sobre personagens e tramas delineia para além do estreitamente montagem, conceito em moda dos anos 20 fictícias) ou ‘documentário’ (quando narrativo. até os anos 60. Elementos estilísticos como entretemos asserções, postulados, sobre o profundidade-de-campo, plano-seqüência, mundo histórico ou pessoal). Muitas vezes Temas que envolvem a própria noção de entrada e saída de campo, espaço fora-de- as definições não são tão claras e as cartas história e a possibilidade de sua periodização campo, mise-en-scène, raccord, falso estão misturadas, mas o campo do cinema são trabalhados pela bibliografia em Teoria raccord, olhar, interpretação de atores, pode ser definido se pensado de modo amplo do Cinema. Noções essenciais para o música, falas, roteiro, fotografia, cenografia, e sem preconceitos. Estudos cruzados, estabelecimento desta história, como a noção etc, compõem os tijolos sobre os quais se interdisciplinares, entre Literatura e Cinema, de Autor, são aprofundadas. Outro ponto constrói a estilística cinematográfica. A Pintura e Cinema, Teatro e Cinema, História que tem chamado a atenção na Teoria do análise fílmica fornece substância concreta e Cinema, Imagem Digital e Cinema etc. Cinema é o questionamento da noção de para o trabalho com a teoria do cinema, possuem ampla bibliografia. Estudos de ‘nacionalidade’ na definição dos diversos embasando a reflexão. Olhar o estilo é o Cinema, portanto, não é o ensino prático de cinemas nacionais. Temas caros ao universo último degrau que se consegue percorrer no como fazer cinema (embora possa e deva dos ‘estudos culturais’ (feminismo, minorias corpo-a-corpo com o filme. Em função do interagir com esta dimensão) e também não étnicas, estudos de gênero, a questão do movimento contínuo, e da ampla quantidade é o estudo das mídias (televisão, internet), sujeito) percorreram de modo intenso o de elementos que marcam a estilística nem das humanidades (antropologia e campo dos estudos de cinema nos últimos cinematográfica, analisar exige uma história), das artes plásticas, da literatura, ou dez anos. Também o horizonte da filosofia verdadeira educação do olhar. O objetivo do teatro. É tudo isso, trazendo em seu analítica e do cognitivismo foi mapeado de desta educação deve ser o abandono dos centro irradiador a forma narrativa modo polêmico. Nos anos 60/70/80, o níveis mais imediatos de conteúdo, cinematográfica. conceitual do estruturalismo francês, a conseguindo o ‘leitor’ elevar-se até a semiologia (Metz) e depois o pós- dimensão da mise-en-scène propriamente. No núcleo dos Estudos de Cinema estruturalismo de Deleuze, Lacan, Derrida e vislumbramos três disciplinas diversas: outros, tiveram forte influência. A Teoria Para terminar este breve apanhado dos ‘História do Cinema’, ‘Teoria do Cinema’ e clássica do cinema também compõe este Estudos de Cinema, é importante esclarecer ‘Análise Fílmica’. Em História do Cinema campo de estudo, através da influência do uma questão. Na medida em que a arte trabalhamos a dimensão diacrônica da arte impressionismo (Epstein, Dulac, Balazs), do cinematográfica sofre, desde sua origem, a cinematográfica, seus diferentes períodos e construtivismo (Vertov, Eisenstein), da mediação da técnica, é comum o discurso movimentos. Analisamos também as fenomenologia (Bazin, Zavatttini), do que nega sua especificidade histórica. Sobre- produções nacionais (História do Cinema realismo (Kracauer). A reflexão recente determinando a questão tecnológica, Brasileiro, Chinês, Francês, etc). Neste sobre cinema documentário mostra-se densa, transforma Estudos de Cinema em estudos campo cabem estudos autorais, centrados em acompanhando um aprofundamento da de mídia, posição expressa muitas vezes personalidades da História do Cinema (o tendência analítica/cognitivista na através do conceito de ‘audiovisual’. O cinema de Bergman, Welles, Renoir, Rocha, contraposição aos estudos culturais. A cinema seria uma máquina, uma mídia, e etc). Em geral, estudos sobre História do Teoria do Cinema é, portanto, uma não uma forma narrativa, que tenderia a Cinema detêm-se no cinema ficcional. disciplina dos Estudos de Cinema que desaparecer como outras máquinas antigas Recentemente tem aumentado o espaço da fundamenta estudos históricos e autorais. do século XIX. Nossa visão é que o cinema pesquisa em cinema documentário dentro da é uma forma narrativa relativamente estável, história da produção cinematográfica Um terceiro horizonte dos Estudos de veiculada através de mídias diversas, mundial. Na abordagem dos momentos em Cinema pode ser delimitado na Análise oscilando em sua forma em função do que as vanguardas do século XXI cotejam o Fílmica. Definimos assim a pesquisa que se quesito tecnológico, entre outros. cinema (expressionismo alemão, debruça sobre o filme propriamente e suas construtivismo russo, impressionismo unidades (fotogramas, planos, seqüências, A sobreposição cinema/mídia no conceito de francês, realismo italiano, surrealismo, cenas, etc). A análise fílmica detalha a audiovisual leva à confusão entre instância cinema experimental, o pós-modernismo, dimensão estilística do cinema, servindo de narrativa e a mídia que é veiculada. Para etc) podemos constatar uma abrangência se substrato para a pesquisa histórica/autoral. esta visão, se uma mídia evolui O ponto clássico da análise fílmica é a tecnologicamente, a narrativa que veicula

8 ON THE PROFESSION

Películas de papel Cartografía del estudio del cine de América Latina

por GUSTAVO A. REMEDI | Trinity College | [email protected]

também deve desaparecer. Como isto não Tan importante como hacer cine es hallar el distribución. Tal es el caso, por ejemplo, de ocorre, surge uma esquizofrenia entre análise lugar y el momento para reflexionar Gutiérrez Alea, Glauber Rocha, Nelson e conteúdo, expressa na demanda insistente sistemáticamente acerca de él. Pero al igual Pereira dos Santos, Jorge Sanjinés, García de um outro Cinema, que se adeque a nova que el cine de América Latina, que atraviesa Espinosa, Fernando Birri, Fernando Solanas, máquina midiática. Postura que traz um un período de auge, lo que se ha teorizado y Octavio Getino, entre otros. Algunos de sus ranço normativo, querendo determinar como escrito también parece haber llegado a un ensayos más importantes—“La estética del o cinema deve ser, ou desaparecer, com o punto de inflexión. Nos proponemos aquí hambre” de Rocha, “La dialéctica del surgimento da televisão, da internet, ou das echar luz sobre diversos aspectos del espectador” de Gutiérrez Alea, “Por un cine novas máquinas produtoras de imagens. A tortuoso devenir del estudio del cine e imperfecto” de García Espinosa, “Un cine visão tecnológica evolucionista, que possui identificar algunas tareas pendientes, así junto al pueblo” de Sanjinés, etc.—fueron forte presença na universidade brasileira, tem como un conjunto de nuevos desafíos y recopilados y traducidos al inglés (Pick dificuldades em lidar com a evidência da riesgos. 1978, Chanan 1993, Martin 1997). Burton simultaneidade entre novas e antigas mídias (1986) recoge, en sus entrevistas, una que não convergem. Para lidar com esta No es aquí el lugar para repasar la historia muestra del pensamiento teórico de estos dificuldade criou-se o conceito de general del cine en América Latina, ni realizadores. ‘audiovisual’ que expressa, entre outros tampoco la del cine producido en cada uno aspectos, o desejo da redução cinema/mídia. de los países del continente. Diversos La mayoría de estos realizadores-ensayistas Na realidade, o campo dos Estudos de autores, bastante establecidos, ya se han cursaron diversos tipos de estudios Cinema tem em seu núcleo a dimensão encargado de ello (Burns 1975, Chanan universitarios (derecho, teatro, filosofía, diacrônica da narrativa cinematográfica, 1985, 2004; Burton 1986, Armes 1987, historia, etc.) y experimentaron con diversas dimensão que realça sua estilística particular. Schumann 1987, Mora 1989, King 1990, disciplinas artísticas (teatro, poesía, música). É para esta estilística, e sua história, que se Pick 1993, Johnson y Stam 1995, Martin Eran, no obstante, intelectuales que orienta Estudos de Cinema, abrindo-se 1997). Sí es preciso señalar que fue en el concebían la cultura y el arte como un enquanto campo de conhecimento. contexto del surgimiento del cine instrumento al servicio del cambio político y comprometido de los años 60 y 70 (del social. En cuanto a sus “estudios de cine”, llamado Nuevo Cine o Tercer Cine) que la situación fue variada: Gutiérrez Alea, también nació, o por lo menos cobró García Espinosa y Fernando Birri estudiaron impulso, un “discurso”—teórico, formal, en el Centro Esperimentale della histórico—acerca del cine latinoamericano. Cinematografia en Roma. Al volver a Cuba, También se organizaron centros e institutos en 1959, año de la Revolución, García dedicados a estos efectos. Fueron los Espinosa participó de la creación del comienzos del pensamiento y el estudio del Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria cine de América Latina. Cinematográfica (ICAIC). A su regreso a Argentina, Birri fundó el Instituto de En su mayoría, fueron los propios cineastas Cinematografía de la Universidad del los que por medio de entrevistas, mesas Litoral. Patricio Guzmán, por su parte, redondas, manifiestos y artículos en revistas comenzó en el Intituto Fílmico de la culturales, políticas, ocasionalmente de cine Universidad Católica de Chile pero se (Cine Cubano, Cine del Tercer Mundo, Ojo graduó en la Escuela Oficial de al cine, 1x1, Octubre, Cine y Liberación) Cinematografía de Madrid. Sanjinés estudió reflexionaban y escribían acerca de su arte: en Chile y luego dirigió el Instituto de Cine de su relación con la sociedad, con los de Bolivia. Los únicos estudios formales de desafíos políticos y culturales del momento, Pereira dos Santos fueron en Derecho, de los temas que debía abordar, del modo de aunque más tarde dictó el primer curso de tratarlos, la perspectiva a adoptar, el lenguaje cine en el Instituto Central de Arte de la y la técnica cinematográfica, la relación con Universidad de Brasília y dirigió el Instituto el público, el problema de la financiación y

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REMEDI continued…

de Arte y Comunicación Social de la habían imaginado los impulsores del Nuevo paso más allá de la ciudad letrada—para Universidad Federal Fluminense. Cine. quienes Gutiérrez Alea, Guzmán, Sanjinés, Rocha, Pereira dos Santos, Solanas y otros En esa tarea de reflexión, discusión y Distinto fue el panorama en Estados Unidos autores pasaron a ocupar en el campo del elaboración de un discurso acerca del cine o Europa donde debido a un mayor cine el mismo sitial que ocupaban en la latinoamericano estos realizadores tuvieron desarrollo de la industria de los medios literatura los autores del “boom” literario: por interlocutores a otros intelectuales o masivos y a un mayor desgaste del Carpentier, García Márquez, Rulfo, Onetti, críticos que se desempeñaban en periódicos y tradicional paradigma de las bellas artes el Cortázar. (Uno de los peligros que enfrentan revistas culturales, a los aficionados al cine estudio del cine se desarrolló en forma más los estudios culturales es, precisamente, caer nucleados en las cinematecas y los cineclubes temprana. Ello fue además alimentado y en la tentación de reemplazar una forma de (que muchas veces publicaban sus propios reforzado por la creación de áreas arte por otra, una vanguardia por otra, boletines y revistas), y por supuesto, a un universitarias dedicadas al estudio de la traicionando su objetivo de estudiar la segmento culto y radicalizado de la clase cultura popular, la cultura de masas y los cultura más allá de la alta cultura y del arte). media—muchos de ellos jóvenes y estudios culturales que de la mano de la universitarios—que constituían su público Escuela de Frankfurt, la de Birmingham o la El (nuevo) cine latinoamericano, además, pero que también eran protagonistas de los semiótica francesa (Getino 2002) ofrecía una nueva visión y una nueva imagen procesos de cambio social, político y cultural incentivaron y organizaron el estudio, el de la realidad histórica, social y política, que caracterizaron este acalorado período de análisis y la crítica de lo que unos llamaron sostenida por el carácter iconográfico, la historia. Pese a ello, ni la academia “las prácticas culturales de las clases indéxico, espacial y poético propio de este latinoamericana ni la extranjera se populares” (Williams), la “hegemonía” poderoso medio expresivo. En efecto, aun interesaron mayormente por el cine en cultural (Gramsci), “la cultura de masas” cuando no fuera del todo nueva, era una América Latina. (Adorno), el arte mecánicamente imagen más incisiva, “tangible”, legible, reproducido (Benjamin) y “la mitología de la memorable, y sobre todo, accesible al gran En América Latina, salvo contadísimas sociedad de consumo” (Barthes). público, letrado o no. Esto vale tanto para excepciones, la preocupación cultural y el género documental como para el cine de estética en el medio académico seguía De todos modos, según López “hasta la ficción, que en América Latina, en buena centrada en las bellas artes (la literatura, la década de los 80 era casi imposible parte, siguió intentando captar y explorar pintura, la música), con una casi total encontrar un libro o más de una o dos críticamente la realidad histórica, social y desatención y desinterés por “la cultura de monografías en idioma inglés dedicadas al cultural. masas”. La creación de las carreras de cine latinoamericano” (1991). Fue el interés periodismo y las escuelas y licenciaturas en y el compromiso con el proceso político de A la luz de lo anterior, no ha de extrañar que comunicación en los 70 y 80—en el contexto América Latina (el contexto revolucionario quienes se dedicaron al estudio y enseñanza de las dictaduras y con intereses ya muy de los 60; las dictaduras militares de los 70, del cine de América Latina en el mundo alejados del propósito del cambio social— el retorno a la democracia en los 80) lo que anglosajón se formaran y desempeñaran en privilegiarán la prensa escrita, la radio, la motivó a algunos intelectuales en Europa y la intersección de diversas disciplinas y televisión, la publicidad. La reflexión sobre Estados Unidos a interesarse por el cine en campos: por un lado, los programas de el cine siguió girando alrededor de los América Latina, y en especial, el modo en estudios de América Latina, una de las áreas institutos y escuelas de cine privadas, los que el cine acompaña y se articula con el geográfico-culturales de los programas de cineclubes y alguna revista, que nucleaban a proceso histórico cultural del continente. Estudios Internacionales. Tal es el caso, por realizadores, críticos (muchos de ellos, ejemplo, de Burton o Shaw. Por otro lado, autodidactas) y amantes del cine. No es En los 80 y 90, algunos cientistas sociales los estudios del cine y la TV, como en el caso casual que la revista virtual argentina “latinoamericanistas” (interesados en la de Chanan, Martin, Pick, López, Burton, dedicada al cine se llame, precisamente, El historia, la sociedad o la política de América Mora, Berg, Buchsbaum, Noriega o amante. La revista virtual chilena La fuga, Latina) también descubrieron y se ocuparon Aufderhaide. Y tercero, los estudios no obstante, deja entrever un cambio en el del papel que jugaba la cultura y dentro de literarios, de la cultura popular y los estudios papel social del cine, muy diferente al que ella el cine. Lo mismo ocurrió con una parte culturales. Tal es el caso de King, Johnson, de la crítica literaria—que se aventuró un Foster, Stock, Podalski y un sinnúmero de

10 autores que han publicado en revistas no recientes más sistemáticos y de referencia revistas, en su mayoría de corta de vida. Son especializadas en cine como Revista están publicados en inglés. Esto presenta escasos los estudios de autor Iberoamericana1, Latin American Research dos obstáculos para acceder a estos trabajos latinoamericano acerca del cine continental Review2, The Americas3, o Journal of Latin desde América Latina: uno económico y otro como conjunto, y los que hay fueron American Cultural Studies5. También, en la lingüístico. Inversamente, se corre el riesgo realizados en el extranjero, caso de Gumucio intersección entre cine e historia, caso de de prescindir de investigar y acceder a lo que (1983), Getino (2002, 2006) y Paranaguá Stevens (1997) o Baugh y Schoenecke se ha escrito y publicado en América latina, (1985, 2003). Distinto es el caso de los (2004), o entre cine y literatura (Podalski, y que debido a la distribución de libros y estudios de los cines nacionales, acerca de los 2002). periódicos, o a los sistemas de compras, no cuales hoy disponemos de una cuantiosa siempre encuentra la forma de llegar hasta el bibliografía, principalmente acerca de Hoy los estudios del cine de América Latina mundo académico, las bibliotecas y el salón Argentina, Brasil, Cuba y México. (Ver atraviesan por una verdadera explosión pero de clase. Es posible que algún día internet Getino [2002], Elena y Díaz López [2003], deben sortear una serie de obstáculos. Para resuelva parcialmente este problema Shaw [2003], o las bibliografías en línea de comenzar, la barrera del idioma, la (Cineaste Otoño 2008), pero todavía las la Universidad de California-Berkeley o el dispersión que caracteriza los escritos sobre bibliotecas y la mayoría de las publicaciones Centro de Información e Investigaciones de el cine y la dificultad para acceder a las virtuales ni contienen todo lo publicado en la Fundación del nuevo Cine publicaciones del otro hemisferio, incluidas castellano ni son de acceso público.5 latinoamericano, recién mencionado). las publicaciones virtuales. Segundo, el problema del desigual desarrollo y Otro obstáculo a superar es el menor Aparte de los estudios históricos—que organización de los estudios desarrollo de los estudios latinoamericanos predominan—, debido a las carencias latinoamericanos como campo como campo transdisciplinario en América económicas, buena parte de la reflexión y el transdisciplinario, tanto en el Sur como en el Latina. En contraste con el mayor discurso acerca del cine en América Latina Norte. Tercero, la distinta evolución del desarrollo institucional de los mismos en el hoy gira principalmente en torno a la estudio del cine en una y otra región. Norte, que nacieron al abrigo del proyecto institucionalidad del cine, las industrias Cuarto, el problema de la circulación y el de los estudios del área, la academia culturales, las formas de apoyar acceso a las realizaciones mismas, sobre todo latinoamericana sigue estando financieramente su producción; de en el marco de una explosión de creación mayoritariamente organizada—dividida—en viabilizar—multiplicar—la distribución y cinematográfica y la coexistencia de al disciplinas y facultades separadas. El estudio exhibición de las películas; de crear fondos, menos tres o cuatro generaciones. Quinto, de América Latina, por consiguiente, ocurre leyes, organizaciones, redes y formas de el riesgo a una nueva mistificación, en donde en forma compartimentada y desigual cooperación con tales fines; o socializar los el cine, en reemplazo de la literatura, y un (dependiendo de cada disciplina) y los medios de producción aprovechando la pequeño número de películas y autores, centros interdisciplinarios (por ejemplo, para revolución digital. (Getino 2006) Más raros pasan a tomarse como resumen y el estudio de América Latina) si es que o escasos son los abordajes teóricos, estéticos condensación de la cultura latinoamericana. existen, son incipientes y débiles. Si a ello le y de análisis de obras más allá de breves Sexto, la emergencia de una nueva sumamos el desinterés histórico por el reseñas periodísticas. generación de estudios del cine, con nuevas estudio de la cultura popular, la cultura de preocupaciones y agendas que intenta ir más masas y el cine en particular, está claro que Las dificultades económicas también acá y más allá del Nuevo Cine, pero que no ha existido un espacio institucional lo impactan en el terreno estético y de enfrenta nuevos desafíos y riesgos. suficientemente apto como para albergar el propuesta cinematográfica. Buena parte del estudio del cine latinoamericano. Los cine mexicano, argentino y brasilero es un Además de la dispersión y débil institutos y escuelas privadas en general cine comercial, evasivo y para pasar el institucionalización del estudio del cine también son débiles para consolidarse como tiempo (que, pese a ello, es preciso estudiar). apuntada por diversos autores—y que usinas de investigación, enseñanza y Por su parte, los realizadores y productores pronto descubre cualquier investigador—el divulgación, o como referentes de peso a artísticamente más ambiciosos estéticamente estudio del cine de América Latina ha escala continental, a excepción, quizás, de la y socialmente más comprometidos, sin generado dos bibliotecas: una en castellano y Fundación del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano claudicar por completo en su independencia, otra en inglés. Muchos de los estudios en La Habana. Lo mismo ocurre con las se ven forzados a optar por obras prolijas y

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fácilmente legibles para espectadores y responde a que la diferencia era más obvia América Latina difícilmente entran en el críticos formados en las convenciones que en obras y estéticas anteriores y mercado global o los ámbitos dedicados al estéticas y cinematográficas de los grandes posteriores, en las que la diferencia existe estudio del cine, o lo hacen tardíamente. mercados, juegos sutiles pero no muy pero es más sutil y menos visible “a los ojos Unas veces esto se debe a problemas de arriesgados, ejercicios virtuosistas y más de extranjeros”. Por ello recomienda usar “un distribución; otras de derechos; a veces una concesión a las fórmulas de Hollywood peine más fino” (248). Lo cierto es que porque no tienen subtítulos; otras porque a las que el público local ya se ha como muestran King 1990, Pick 1993, vienen en formatos incompatibles; o porque acostumbrado. Allí radica parte del Chanan 2003, y numerosas colecciones se apartan demasiado del patrón que fija abandono de la experimentación formal y la recientes (Stock 1997, Stevens 1997, Noriega Hollywood, las distribuidoras y las propias búsqueda de nuevos lenguajes propio de los 2000, Shaw 2003, 2007; Elena y Díaz 2003, salas de cine. El problema se agrava para las 60 y 70. Cada vez más se recurre a las Shaw y Dennison 2005, etc.), tanto el películas no comerciales, los documentales oportunidades de financiación que ofrece el “nuevo cine” como el cine emergente se las (Burton 1990, Paranaguá y Avellar 2003), Primer Mundo, y a las oportunidades de ingenió para sobrevivir, responder y aportar los cortometrajes, los videos y las películas legitimación y promoción que ofrecen los lo suyo en el marco de los distintos en soporte digital, todo lo cual ha crecido grandes festivales y premios (Cannes, contextos y encrucijadas que le tocó exponencialmente de la mano de las Hollywood) una vez superada la primera afrontar: dictaduras militares, desilusión tras movilizaciones sociales y políticas etapa: Rotterdam, San Sebastián, La el retorno de la democracia, colapso del libre (Aufderheide 2000) y las nuevas tecnologías. Habana, Toronto o Berlín. Esto no significa mercado, desafíos poscoloniales, lucha Como resultado, el estudio del cine que no existan méritos estéticos y diferencias contra la discriminación étnica, racial, de latinoamericano sufre de dos males opuestos: formales y de tratamiento dignas de género, la burocracia, la violencia, la o se basa en un pequeñísimo número de consideración y estudio siempre que las fractura social y cultural, el drama de la películas que consiguen penetrar el mercado queramos descubrir, realzar y elevar a su migración y el exilio, la lucha por la global (pero que no es representativo y justo plano. La necesidad de interesar y memoria, etc. Pese al inmenso poder de las quizás sea lo menos interesante), o trata de llegar al gran público nacional, de que el majors y las grandes corporaciones que obras muy importantes y significativas, tanto espectador local se sienta representado y dominan la industria cultural, el cine clásicas como contemporáneas, que más allá tenido en cuenta, y a la vez aspirar a una latinoamericano igual se hizo un lugar como del ámbito local, o los conocedores, nadie exhibición internacional también ha uno de los principales instrumentos vio ni verá nunca. resultado en no pocos aciertos y aportes en formativos de la opinión pública y la materia de temas y tratamiento formal. Es identidad cultural. El interés por el cine de América Latina— decir, los nuevos autores no se han reemplazante de turno de la literatura, las conformado simplemente con “contar otras Al margen de los inconvenientes para ciencias sociales u otras humanidades—y su historias con los mismos medios” (el acceder a lo que se escribe y publica en los utilización como instrumento para conocer y lenguaje de Hollywood) como sugieren infinitos rincones del continente, otro estudiar la realidad continental también Fornet (en Stock 1997 xiii) o Falicov (2007 problema igualmente acuciante es la corre el riesgo de crear una nueva clase de 418). dificultad para conocer, poder ver y exhibir mistificación, en la medida que el cine es lo que se está produciendo en los distintos solamente una forma de representación entre De lo anterior se desprende que otro de los países de América Latina, sobre todo en las muchas otras y no tiene por qué privilegiarse desafíos que enfrentan los estudios del cine últimas décadas, por creadores jóvenes y en frente a otras prácticas sociales y discursos latinoamericano es poder escapar al otros circuitos y formatos: cortos, simbólicos. hechizo—al carácter monumental—del documentales, videoclips. Al margen de las Tercer Cine o el Nuevo Cine en su estado películas más fácilmente comercializables y López (2006) y Wood (2008) señalan que más crudo y radical (de los 60 y 70), y que digeribles que hoy conforman el nuevo uno de los aportes de los estudios de cine por su diferencia formal, su carácter canon (pongamos por caso, Como agua para más recientes es la preocupación por la experimental, su sofisticación teórica, chocolate, Estación central, La historia historia del cine anterior y posterior al capturó y hasta monopolizó el interés—y la oficial, ¿Quién diablos es Juliette?, Los Nuevo Cine: dos continentes recién fantasía política—de los estudios del cine. diarios de motocicleta), la inmensa mayoría descubiertos. También, un interés por Wood sostiene que parte de dicha atracción de las películas que se producen y se ven en combinar el estudio histórico o

12 institucional—más frecuentado en América 4 Pienso, por ejemplo, en los trabajos de Joanna ______, ed. The Social Documentary in Latina—con los análisis textuales más Page (2005), sobre la relación entre cine y Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of característicos de la crítica europea y nación; Luis Martín Cabrera y Daniel Noemi Pittburgh Press, 1990. norteamericana (Wood 255). Voionmaa sobre Machuca; de Richard Gordon sobre La última cena y Chico Rei; de Deborah Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema. Minneapolis: Martin sobre ¿Quién diablos es Juliette?; de University of Minnesota, 2003. Wood y Page (2005) advierten, no obstante, James Cisneros sobre Patricio Guzmán y Raúl el peligro de subordinar el estudio del cine Ruiz; de Ignacio Sánchez Prado sobre Amores María Lourdes Cortés, La pantalla rota: Cien latinoamericano a los imperativos y debates perros, publicados en 2006 y 2007. años de cine en Centroamérica. México: teóricos del Primer Mundo perdiendo de Tauros, 2003. vista aquello que queda fuera de “la mirada 5 Cahiers du Cinema, Close Up, Film Quarterly, extranjera” o los intereses, agendas y Framework, Quarterly Review of Film & Alberto Elena y Marina Díaz López, eds. The fantasías de la crítica (Willemen 2006). Tal Video, Screen, Sight and Sound, 24 Images, Cinema of Latin America. London: la tentación de estudiar el cine etc., están disponibles en internet pero salvo Mayflower, 2003. latinoamericano desde marcos teóricos post- excepciones (Jump Cut, Cineaste) se llega a nacionalistas y post-políticos bajo la ellas mediante bibliotecas y bases de datos ______, Tierra en trance: El cine privadas o el pago de una suscripción. latinoamericano en 100 películas. Madrid: influencia de una vaga idea de Alianza Editorial, 1999. “globalización”—mar de los sargazos en que ha naufragado parte de la crítica literaria— Fuentes bibliográficas Tamara Falicov, “Cinema” [Since 1990], quitándolo de su contexto, desligándolo de Encyclopedia of Latin American History & procesos sociales y culturales nacionales, o Patricia Aufderheide, “Cinema” [From the Silent Culture, 2nd Edition (2008), 419-23. no tomando en cuenta el modo en que los Film to 1990], Encyclopedia of Latin autores—o las distintas coyunturas y American History & Culture, 2nd Edition Octavio Getino, Cine Iberoamericano. Los espacios culturales—modifican e imprimen (2008), 413-9. desafíos del nuevo siglo. Costa Rica: Editorial su sello a los lenguajes, convenciones y Veritas, Fundación del Nuevo Cine géneros cinematográficos. ______, “Grassroots Video in Latin Latinoamericano (Cuba), 2006. America”, en Chon Noriega, Visible Nations… (2000), 219-238. ______y Susana Velleggia, El cine de las historias de la revolución. Buenos Aires: Notas Scott L. Baugh y Michael K. Schoenecke, Eds. Altamira, 2002. “Special Issue: Latin American Film”, Film & 1 Ver, por ejemplo, Geoffrey Kantaris, “El cine History 34 1-2 (2004). Virginia Gibbs, “Latin American Film” (Review urbano y la tercera violencia en Colombia”, Article), Latin American Research Review 27, Revista Iberoamericana LXXIV 223 (Abril- Jesús Martín Barbero, De los medios a las 3 (1992), 203-215. Junio 2008), o el número especial dirigido por mediaciones. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1987. Podalsky (2002). Alfonso Gumucio Dagrón, Cine, censura y exilio Jonathan Buchsbaum. Cinema and the en América Latina. México: Stunam-Cimca, 2 Ver, por ejemplo, Virginia Higginbotham, Sandinistas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983 “Fast Frames: Insights into Mexican, Latin 2003. American, and Brazilian Cinema” LARR 40, 3 Virginia Higginbotham, “Fast frames: Insights (2005); Gustavo Subero, “Fear of the Bradford Burns. Latin American Cinema: Film into Mexican, Latin American, and Brazilian Trannies: On the Filmic Phobia of and history. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin Cinema” (Review Essay) Latin American Transvestism in the New Latin American American Center / University of California, Research Review 40, 3 (October 2005) 273- Cinema”, LARR 43, 2 (2008); Paul Schroeder 1975. 82. “Latin American Silent Cinema: Triangulation and the Politics of Criollo Aesthetics” LARR Julianne Burton, Cinema and social change in Randal Johnson y Robert Stam, eds. Brazilian 43, 3 (2008); o Virginia Gibbs (1992). Latin America: Conversations with filmakers. Cinema. New York: Columbia University Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. Press, 1995. 3 Ver el número especial sobre “Latin American Film History” dirigido por Ana M. López John King, Magical Reels: A history of Cinema (2006). in Latin America. New York: Verso 1990.

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John King, Ana M. López y Manuel Alvarado, Cynthia Ramsey, “Third Cinema in Latin Mediating two worlds: Cinematic encounters America. Critical Theory in Recent Works”, of the Americas. London: BFI, 1993. Latin American Research Review 23, 1 (1988): 266-75. Ana M. López, “The State of Things: New Directions in Latin American Film History”, Deborah Shaw, ed. Contemporary Latin The Americas. A Quarterly Review of Inter- American Cinema. Breaking into the Global American Cultural History 63, 2 (October Market. Lanham, MD: Rowman and 2006). Littlefield, 2007.

______, “Setting Up the Stage: A Decade of ______, Contemporary Cinema of Latin Latin American Film Scholarship”, Quarterly America: Ten Key Films. New York: Review of Film and Video 12, 1-3 (1991), Continuum, 2003. 239-260. Lisa Shaw y Stephanie Dennison, eds. Latin Michael T. Martin, ed. The New Latin American American cinema: Essays on Modernity, Cinema, 2 Vols. Detroit: Wayne State gender and national identity. Jefferson, NC y University Press, 1997. Londres: McFarland, 2005.

Carl Mora, Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Anne Marie Stock, Framing Latin American Society, 1896-2004. Jefferson, NC: Cinema. Contemporary critical perspectives. McFarland, 2005. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Lucía Nagib, The New Brazilian Cinema. London and New York: Taurus, 2003. Peter Schumann, Historia del cine latinoamericano (Trad. Oscar Zambrano). Andrea Noble. Mexican National Cinema. Buenos Aires: Cine Libre/Editorial Legasa, London and New York: Routledge, 2005. 1987.

Chon Noriega, ed. Visible Nations. Latin Donald F. Stevens, Based on a True Story. Latin American Cinema and Video. Minneapolis: American History at the Movies. Wilmington, University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Del.: SR Books, 1997.

Paulo Antonio Paranaguá, Cinema na América David M. J. Wood, “With Foreign Eyes: English- latina. Porto Alegre: L & PM Editores, 1985. Language Criticism in Latin America”, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 17, 2 ______. Tradición y modernidad en el cine (August 2008) 245-259. de América Latina. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2003.

______y José Carlos Avellar, El cine documental en América Latina. Madrid. Cátedra, 2003.

Zuzana Pick, The New Latin American Cinema. A Continental Project. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

Laura Podalsky, ed., “Literatura y cine en América Latina”, Special Issue of Revista Iberoamericana LXVIII, 199 (Abril-Junio 2002).

14 ON THE PROFESSION

Latin American Cinema and Latin American Studies by KATHLEEN NEWMAN | The University of Iowa | [email protected]

In the United States, Latin American film York University, University of Southern colleague, thus becoming our collection’s one scholars have a variety of institutional California, University of California at Los and only meta-maleta.) One further note homes: Departments of Art and Art History, Angeles, University of California at Santa regarding formats: film teachers always Cinema Studies (which might include the Barbara, University of California at Berkeley, prefer the widescreen format versions of film study of filmmaking as well as film history University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and on DVD because it preserves the original and theory), Communications Studies, University of Texas at Austin, among others. aspect ratio, that is, how the film would English, Media Studies, and/or Spanish and Scholars from both Latin America and the have been seen when projected in a film Portuguese. Many U.S.-based film scholars United States attend film conferences in the theater. It is always news among Latin belong to two or three professional region: for example, the “Fourth Americanist film scholars when a DVD organizations: the Society for Cinema and International Congress: Women and Silent version of a restored film is released, such as Media Studies (SCMS), the Modern Film” was hosted by the Centro restored versions of films by Glauber Rocha Language Association (MLA), and the Latin Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y currently available or under preparation in American Studies Association. Both the Humanidades of the Universidad de Brazil, or when museums, such as the Museo MLA and LASA have film sections that meet Guadalajara in 2006, and, since 2002, U.S. de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires at, and generate panels for their national and Latin Americanist film scholars have (MALBA), undertake to publish DVD international professional meetings. In attended meetings of the Sociedade Brasileira collections of films by contemporary 1991, at a meeting of the Society for Cinema de Estudos de Cinema (SOCINE). filmmakers. Every preservation effort is Studies (the original name of SCMS) in Los important because much of Latin American Angeles, scholars of U.S. Latino Film, joined The change in media technology over the film of the silent period has been lost and by Latin Americanist and Spanish film last decades has profoundly affected the few governments anywhere have committed scholars, founded the Latino Caucus, which study of film, though, while we have passed sufficient funds to the preservation and/or over the years has functioned as both a film or are in the process of passing from the restoration of films of any period. section and, at times, an advocacy group “celluloid age” to the “digital age,” film within SCMS. At the LASA International remains an ephemeral medium. For research The increase in scholarship in Spanish, Congress in Montreal in 2007, the President on twentieth century film (fiction or English and Portuguese on Latin American of the Society for Cinema and Media documentary, features or shorts), scholars Cinema over the last two decades has Studies, at the invitation of the LASA Film prefer to study the original 35mm or 16mm corrected a perception in U.S. film Section, spoke on the ways in which LASA films, if they have been preserved in film scholarship that all Latin American film was and SCMS might combine efforts. archives under climate-controlled conditions, politically-committed New Latin American though most of our research is undertaken Cinema. Paulo Antonio Paranaguá’s As would be expected for scholars in Latin under much less optimal conditions. For Tradición y modernidad en el cine de American Studies, there are strong teaching, while many more Latin American América Latina and John King’s Magical connections between film studies faculty films are now available on DVD than even Reels: A History of Cinema in Latin based in the United States and those based in ten years ago, it is clear that the DVD is America (Second Edition) remain the two Latin America, often facilitated by LASA or another media platform that will fall by the best overviews of Latin American film SCMS. There are strong film studies wayside, requiring media libraries eventually history (including popular cinema, programs at academic institutions in Buenos to upgrade, once again, their technologies commercial cinema, art cinema, and Aires, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Mexico and to review their film holdings. Most U.S. experimental and avant-garde cinemas), City, Guadalajara, and other major cities in universities with strong graduate programs particularly when complemented by Ana M. Latin America, and most national capitals in in film studies do attempt to build a López’s article “Early Cinema and Latin America have public and private collection reflecting the breadth and depth of Modernity in Latin America” in Cinema filmmaking schools (one major international Latin American film history, but funding can Journal, the publication of the Society for school for filmmakers is based in San be limited and DVD releases difficult to Cinema and Media Studies. Preservation Antonio de los Baños, Cuba). Graduate obtain, even with internet purchasing. and access to film trade journals for the programs in film studies in the United States (When the Maleta de cine colombiano silent period varies from country to country: that support the study of Latin American became available in Bogotá, it made its way recently, for example, the Library of the Cinema include the University of Iowa, New to the University of Iowa in the suitcase of a Centro de Investigación y Experimentación

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Latin American Film Scholarship in the UK Mapping the Field

NEWMAN continued… by JOHN KING | University of Warwick | [email protected]

en Video y Cine (CIEVYC) in Buenos Aires The academic study of Latin American become part of the viewing experience of a acquired a copy of Excelsior, a trade journal cinema in British universities has grown broader public, not just the almost secret first published in the second decade of the considerably in the past twenty years and is fascination of initiates. This has been twentieth century, which reveals both the now one of the major areas of interest for helped, of course, by the extraordinary extent of Argentine film production and of staff and students in the broad field of visibility of certain Mexican ‘crossover’ the importation of foreign film in the silent literary and cultural studies. Most directors, in particular Alfonso Cuarón, period. The revision of the modernism universities today offer courses, normally Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro González currently underway in Latin American located in departments of Spanish and Latin Iñárritu, and, of course, Mexican film stars: Literary Studies has found useful material in American Studies, on aspects of cinema, and the face of Gael García Bernal is instantly the subdiscipline of sound studies within film a number of faculty members publish recognised by many. There is also a strong studies and in intermedia investigations of articles, book chapters and monographs interest in Brazilian directors like Walter the relation between records, radio, and film across a range of topics. Salles and Fernando Meirelles, and the ‘new sound. Likewise, comparative studies of the wave’ of Argentine directors such as “Golden Ages” of national cinemas, genre Before trying to define the main contours of Lucrecia Martel, Pablo Trapero, Fabián films, and the current set of “new cinemas” this field, some brief comments on the Bielinsky and Adrián Caetano. Film (by generations of directors coming to the reception of Latin American cinema in the festivals, such as the ‘Discovering Latin fore in the 1990s and in this decade) in Latin UK might help orient the discussion. The America’ festival in London, also screen a America are reshaping our understanding of biggest change in recent years, which wide range of documentaries and fictional the various trajectories of film production, facilitates research and teaching, is the films from less ‘visible’ countries. This distribution, and reception in the region. availability of a number of Latin American interest and activity helps to create a market films on DVD, many with English for academic publication: mainstream Finally, there are moments of great translation available. In the 1980s it was commercial publishers as well as university excitement in the field and new research very difficult to find material in this country. presses are willing to consider books on possibilities. Just this last year, in Buenos Few movies received commercial release. Latin American cinema, and journals—both Aires, Paula Félix-Didier, Director of the Television would show some films from ‘mainstream’ film journals and also ‘Latin Museo Pablo Ducrós Hicken, and Fernando Latin America, which we would avidly video American Studies’ journals—are receptive to M. Peña, the head film programmer for and recycle. The London Film Festival and this bourgeoning film scholarship. MALBA and past director of the Buenos the National Film Theatre in London would Aires Festival Internacional de Cine organize country-based programmes with I am not suggesting that scholarship here is Independiente (BAFICI), discovered a print the help of Embassies in the UK, but in necessarily market-led: interest in Latin of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, brought to order just to see most movies, even once, it American film studies had been increasing Argentina from Germany in 1928, that would be necessary to travel to Latin before the recent focus on contemporary contains footage thought lost to the world. America, to different film festivals, such as cinema of the last ten to fifteen years. Nor The footage revises our understanding of the the Havana festival, or to work in the am I implying that the problem of access to representation of the struggle between the different national Cinematecas and film films has been solved: DVD can offer only a workers and the corporate powers in the archives, since it was rare to find many Latin small fraction of production, the most film. Since it is a print that showed many American films being exhibited even in their commercially viable films. The most times over the years in cine-clubs in Buenos countries of origin. significant independent producer of Aires, this discovery makes it possible for contemporary Argentine cinema, Lita film scholars to review what impact, if any, The situation today is quite different. Apart Stantic, for example, has yet to put her own this film might have had on Argentine from DVD access and the continuing remarkable film about the disappeared in political cinema and political culture, and to stalwarts of Latin American film Argentina, Un muro de silencio (1993), onto examine how such transnational exchanges exhibition—the National Film Theatre in DVD. If scholars with no knowledge of shape film history. London, the different regional film theatres Spanish or Portuguese wanted to develop and the activities of Embassies (in particular studies of Latin American stars to add to the the Mexican and the Brazilian Embassies)— rich literature on stars and society in the contemporary Latin American cinema has Euro American tradition, they would be able

16 to write about García Bernal or Salma clear awareness that these cinemas, from films and has written a guide to Amores Hayek, to take the case of Mexico, but not their inception, long before debates about perros (Smith, 2003), while Else Vieira has about Dolores del Río or María Félix, globalisation became fashionable, are a analysed another internationally successful because the films of even these most famous blend of national and transnational film, City of God (Vieira, 2005). Smith’s of ‘Golden Age’ stars are not readily elements. The nation remains the bedrock focus on the transnational in cinema finds its available in subtitled versions. Work on for film production and distribution in Latin echo in much recent research. Deborah stardom in Brazilian cinema—which is a America and the state still plays a significant Shaw (Portsmouth) has offered key readings very strong feature of UK film studies—can role in a number of countries. It is also far of contemporary films (Shaw 2003) and has be found in the Centre for Brazilian Film too simplistic to see film production from also edited a book that features a number of Studies at Leeds. One of the most the nineties as being exclusively essays that concentrate specifically on the committed and successful producers of ‘transnational’, and to wave farewell to the global market (Shaw, 2007). Armida de la recent Latin American cinema, the British national project, despite the obvious Garza (Nottingham) is also preparing for academic turned producer, Don Ranvaud— attraction of crossover star directors such as publication the symposium papers of a who has produced the work of Salles, Cuarón, Salles and Del Toro, who are the conference held at Puebla in 2008 on Trapero, Meirelles and many other younger exceptions rather than the rule. Stephanie transnational cinema. The proceedings of directors—is currently engaged on a project, Dennison (Leeds) and Lisa Shaw (Liverpool) another major conference held at through his company Ondamax films, of have co-written the volume on Brazil for the Cambridge, edited by Page and Haddu, also bringing to DVD some of the most Routledge national cinema series (Shaw and offer a perspective on debates over the important films of the sixties, directed by Dennison, 2007), whilst Andrea Noble national and the transnational in fiction film Jorge Sanjinés in Bolivia, amongst others. (Durham) wrote the volume on Mexican and documentary (Haddu and Page, 2009). Even these films, that occupy a central cinema for the same series, concentrating on position in debates on sixties cinema, are in a close reading of representative films In the main, the focus of UK-based research danger of being lost from sight. The work (Noble, 2005). Several scholars have looked is on the ‘big three’ industries of Argentina, of film preservation and then distribution at contemporary film movements from Brazil and Mexico. Some attention is being remains one of the perennial problems of the within a national framework: Lúcia Nagib paid to contemporary cinema in Peru (Sarah field. Most work in the UK on Latin (Leeds) has explored recent Brazilian cinema Barrow, Anglia Ruskin) and Uruguay (Keith American film still comes from inside area (Nagib, 2003, 2007), Miriam Haddu (Royal Richards, Sheffield), with examples of their studies or language departments rather than Holloway, London), has focused on Mexican work in Shaw and Dennison (2005), while from film studies departments, although in cinema in the nineties (Haddu, 2007), while Rory O’Bryen (Cambridge) has explored recent years we find more scholars with Joanna Page (Cambridge) has analysed cinematic and literary representations of La Latin American expertise based in Film Argentine film of the last decade (Page, Violencia in Colombia (O’Bryen, 2008). Studies departments. These scholars are 2009). Jens Andermann and colleagues at Cuba no longer receives the critical attention often contributing to courses and Birkbeck are looking at what they term the as in the heyday of discussions about publications on world cinema. But wherever ‘recovery of the real’ in contemporary ‘imperfect’ or ‘third’ cinema that the they are housed, researchers look to mediate Argentine and Brazilian film, and Catherine directors themselves led in the sixties and between research carried out in Latin Grant (Sussex) has published several early seventies, though Michael Chanan America and the dominant interests of the significant articles on post dictatorship (Roehampton) has updated his seminal book Euro American film studies tradition. Argentine cinema. Geoffrey Kantaris in on Cuba to include developments into the Cambridge is completing a major twenty first century (Chanan, 2004). If we look to classify this work, we find that monograph study of urban cinema since the Stephen Hart has approached a century of most recent publications consider eighties, in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico filmmaking in the continent in his contemporary ‘national’ and and Brazil, exploring how place and identity Companion to Latin American Film through ‘transnational’cinemas. National and are reshaped by local and transnational a close reading of key film texts (Hart, 2004) transnational are not seen as exclusive, forces. Lúcia Sa in Manchester is also and he is active in encouraging work with oppositional categories. Nobody working in working on images of the city in Brazil and the International Film School in Havana. Latin American film offers an essentialist Mexico (Sa, 2007). Paul Julian Smith at Survey books on national cinemas cover the reading of national cinemas, since there is a Cambridge regularly reviews Latin American pre 1960s period to some extent, and

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Dolores Tierney (Sussex) has published an Haddu, Miriam, Contemporary Mexican Cinema Shaw, Lisa and Stephanie Dennison eds., Latin analysis of the work of the Mexican ‘Golden (1989-1999): History, Space and Identity, Edwin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender Age’ director, Emilio Fernández, which Mellon, Lewiston, NJ, 2007 and National Identity, McFarland, Jefferson NC locates itself specifically in debates and London, 2005 concerning transcultural and transnational Haddu, Miriam and Joanna Page, eds., Visual Synergies: Fiction and Documentary Filmmaking Smith, Paul Julian, Amores perros, BFI Modern perspectives (Tierney 2007). A discussion of in Latin America, New York: Palgrave Classics, London, 2003 popular cinema in Brazil can be found in the MacMillan, 2009 work of Shaw and Dennison (2004), while Tierney, Dolores, Emilio Fernández: Pictures in Tierney and Ruétalo have edited a collection Hart, Steven, Companion to Latin American the Margins, Manchester University Press, of papers dealing with exploitation movies in Film, Tamesis, London, 2004 Manchester and New York, 2007 Latin America (Tierney and Ruétalo, 2009). I have concentrated my focus here on book Kantaris, Geoffrey, Latin American Cinema: The Tierney, Dolores and Victoria Ruétalo, eds., publication, but many other researchers Urban Paradigm, fortchcoming Latsploitation: Latin American Exploitation, throughout the country are publishing Trash and Cult Cinema, Routledge, Abingdon regularly on cinema in specialist and non Nagib, Lúcia, Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, and New York, 2009 New Cinema, Utopia, I.B.Tauris, London and specialist journals based in the UK and New York, 2007 Vieira, Else, ‘City of God’ in Several Voices: throughout the Americas. Brazilian Social Cinema as Action, Critical, Nagib, Lúcia, ed., The New Brazilian Cinema, Cultural and Communications Press, London, The significant number of recent titles, I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 2003 2005 outlined above, the work in progress, and the numbers of postgraduates that are Noble, Andrea, Mexican National Cinema, focusing on film-related topics, all point to Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2005 an area of study that is now firmly established in the UK, and where scholars O’Bryen, Rory, Literature, Testimony and are forging productive working relationships Cinema in Contemporary Colombian Culture: Spectres of ‘la Violencia’, Tamesis, London, 2008 with filmmakers in Latin America and with critics throughout the Americas and in Page, Joanna, Crisis and Capitalism in Europe. Contemporary Argentine Cinema, Duke University Press, 2009 [I would like to thank Stephanie Dennison, Geoffrey Kantaris, Toni Kapcia, Andrea Sa, Lucia, Life in the Megalopolis: Mexico City Noble and Deborah Shaw for providing me and São Paulo, Routledge, Abingdon and New with bibliographical information. I would York, 2007 also refer the reader to an excellent article by David Wood which gives an illuminating Shaw, Deborah, Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Ten Key Films, Continuum, London theoretical account of the challenges and the and New York, 2003 pitfalls that await the ‘foreign’ critic: ‘With Foreign Eyes: English Language Criticism on Shaw, Deborah, ed., Contemporary Latin Latin American Film’, Journal of Latin American Cinema: Breaking into the Global American Cultural Studies, Vol.17, 2, August Market, Rowman and Littlefield, London, 2007 2008, pp. 245-259.] Shaw, Lisa and Stephanie Dennison, Brazilian National Cinema, Routledge, Abingdon and Works Cited New York, 2007

Chanan, Michael, Cuban Cinema, University of Shaw, Lisa and Stephanie Dennison, Popular Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2004 Cinema in Brazil, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2004

18 DEBATES

Inequality in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies

Introduction gender and racial inequalities.” Despite the John Beverley, for his part, argues that the historical forces of dispersal and populist turn taken by many Latin American by CYNTHIA STEELE acculturation, “languages that were countries in recent years has elicited a University of Washington, Seattle scheduled to disappear with neoconservative response from one sector of [email protected] globalization…are being reinvigorated by the Latin American critical establishment. indigenous writers.” Her two cases in point, For some critics who came of age in the Since its inception, through the foundational mapuche literature in Chile and zapotec Sixties, Beverley argues, the disavowal of work of Jean Franco, Joseph Sommers, and literature in Mexico, have both evolved armed struggle in middle age has entailed a Hernán Vidal, among others, and continuing through militant resistance to colonization retreat into the privileged space of the into the recent presidency of Arturo Arias, by the state, and exemplify both the Lettered City of which Angel Rama spoke. literary and cultural studies have played a preservation of a rich oral tradition and its pivotal role in the Latin American Studies global dissemination through the Internet. Finally, Luz Horne and Daniel Noemi Association. While the six authors brought Voionmaa trace the evolving representation together in this edition of the Forum share a Idelber Avelar’s essay provides an excellent of marginality in Latin American fiction, passion for literature and a commitment to overview of the best works of recent literary from nineteenth-century realism to the democratization in the Americas, they differ and cultural criticism, many of which modernism of Clarice Lispector. They then widely in their views on how best to marry exemplify globalization in their trilingual concentrate their analysis on the new these two concerns. publication. Moreover, they share a refusal documentary literature immersed in the to limit themselves to one or two problem of urban violence, exemplified by In his provocative opening essay, Jon overarching theoretical debates. Rather, Paulo Lins’s Cidade de Deus and Fernando Beasley-Murray speaks for many of us in Avelar posits, they share a “meticulously Vallejo’s La virgen de los sicarios. In this lamenting the reduction of the Latin specific, object-driven [approach]…usually recent fiction, they observe, violence does American literary canon, in the United anchored in one or two national traditions,” not emanate primarily from the state, which States, Canada and Europe, to Magical and their theoretical concerns emerge is absent or invisible, but from market Realism, as exemplified by the works of inductively, rather than existing a priori to forces. Moreover, “this new aesthetics of the Gabriel García Márquez and his imitators. confirm a particular metacritical stance. marginal” is characterized by As he acutely observes, the genre contained “spectacularization”; “Latin America has the seeds of its own obsolescence, and most Ileana Rodríguez considers the applicability become a stage for the spectacle of literary critics long ago tired of it and turned of the genre of Ecocriticism—which has violence.” The authors argue that this their attention to experimental narrative thrived among U.S. and European literary literature has created “a new language and a and/or testimonio. Many of our students, critics in response to environmental new logic to talk about marginality,” as in however, have not followed suit, leaving us concerns—to the Latin American context. the novels of César Aira. In those of Nora with the dilemma of either boring them with She cautions against prioritizing concerns Fernández and Diamela Eltit, the characters’ ‘good’ literature, or boring ourselves—and about the environmental over those about “fragmented and corroded” bodies are selling out—by teaching them middle-brow human exploitation—ecology over assimilated into their abject surroundings. literature designed to compensate First- equality—, while acknowledging the World readers for their “overdevelopment.” common roots of both types of analysis in In juxtaposing the views of three generations the political-social and against desarrollismo. of cultural critics, from both North and Jean Franco invites us to step outside the The forces of modernization, she notes, have South, and from the Spanish-, Portuguese- canon and consider an emerging body of always regarded the natural world as and English-language traditions, these essays literature that seems to defy the forces of exploitable frontier, in contrast to the ancient suggest the diversity of views and globalization: literature written in indigenous beliefs of Rigoberta Menchú and other approaches, and the vitality of critical languages. This is a literature, Franco indigenous peoples, who have often been debate, in the field of contemporary Latin argues, that challenges “the distinctions that excluded by both modernization and the American literary and cultural studies. I placed high culture over popular cultures, environmental movement. trust they will spark further debates among literary language over dialect, metropolis humanists and social scientists alike. over province and thus tacitly affirmed class,

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Against (In)equality properly speaking, in this traditional experience. Taken as a whole, then, Bad Latin American Literature conception, is defined by the fact that it literature and the critical apparatus that contributes to a cultural sphere defined by surrounds and enables it helps transform by JON BEASLEY-MURRAY the nineteenth-century British critic Matthew affect into effect, and packages difference as University of British Columbia Arnold as the “best which has been thought inequality. This is nowhere more visible [email protected] and said.”3 More recently, the version of than in the construct that is Latin American inequality that preoccupies critics has been literature, by which I mean literature labeled The central concern of literature is not so imported more or less directly from political as belonging to Latin America as a region much inequality, but difference. And so it discourse and concerns the evaluations rather than to Mexico or Peru (or wherever) should be. Literature enables an exploration implicit, it is said, within literature itself. as individual nations. Perhaps this visibility of otherness, variety, and singularity. It does How, for instance, are women or the is because Latin American literature as such so by allowing readers to feel or sense other indigenous represented relative to men, only comes into being through the process of worlds, different from their own, thereby whites, or mestizos? Or how might a translation, both literal and metaphorical, by relativizing their own experience, such that literary text advance the cause of equality, which Latin American texts enter the world they recognize that they, too, are different. more broadly conceived? Still, however, and market. And this is a relatively recent Hence literature differs from film, at least as despite the traditionalists’ lament that phenomenon: for most intents and purposes, described by the Frankfurt School theorist relativism now rules the roost, in fact Latin American literature was invented as Siegfried Kracauer: film often encourages its notions of inequality or equality, and of recently as the 1960s, with the region’s so- spectators to see themselves as the same, as better or worse, remain to the fore. It is just called literary “Boom.” In what follows, I part of a mass, but literature tends to that new standards of judgment are in force. retrace a brief history of the Boom, focusing emphasize either individualism or a much Meanwhile, the institutional and economic first on how it came to redefine the template 1 more diffuse sense of commonality. Film apparatus of book publishing is always of what was “good” literature, and then on constructs a mass audience of equals; about calculation, measurement, and effect: how it has subsequently waned in critical literature posits a common readership costs, sales, awards, and so on. Inevitably appreciation. Indeed, many Latin characterized by diversity. Even critic implicated in that apparatus, literary Americanist critics have practically deserted Benedict Anderson’s famous argument about criticism, too, is complicit in the conversion the field of literary criticism. I suggest that the role of the novel and novel-reading in the of the book as locus of literary experience we should return to the study of literature, construction of nationalist sentiment stresses into just another commodity. This is true as prepared now self-consciously (and self- the range of sensations to which, for much of academic and scholarly reflexively) to embrace the “bad” Latin instance, picaresque narratives expose their commentary as it is of journalistic reviews. American literature as much as the “good. readers: a “tour d’horison,” in the case of Literary criticism tends to side with José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi’s El exchange value rather than use value. When Latin American fiction burst onto periquillo sarniento, of “hospitals, prisons, global consciousness in the late 1960s, it was remote villages, monasteries, Indians, To separate out literature and criticism in heralded as the savior of world literature. Negros,” whose exemplary differences this way, however, is of course an artificial U.S. novelist William Kennedy’s review of combine to constitute the collectivity that exercise. Literature today is almost Gabriel García Márquez was particularly 2 will be called Mexico. In short, literature is unimaginable without the apparatus of hyperbolic but not especially atypical: “One more about imagination than calculation, production, distribution, and reception that Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece experience than measurement, affect than enables texts to find readers. It is hard to of literature since the Book of Genesis that effect. imagine use without exchange, although should be required reading for the entire ironically that is what literature itself human race. [. . . Mr. García Márquez’s] Literary criticism, by contrast, is all too encourages us to do, by erasing (if only success is one of the best things that has often preoccupied with issues of equality or temporarily) our awareness of its own happened to literature in a long, long time.”4 inequality. Traditionally, this is registered in material supports. Almost as soon as we The fact that Kennedy’s review was entitled a discourse on value, for which some books look up from the page, we too are engaged “All of Life, Sense and Nonsense Fills an are better than others in whatever way that in the evaluation and calculation that we Argentine’s Daring Fable” (my emphasis) “better” is to be defined. Indeed, literature had briefly abandoned in the reading shows that the specific provenance of this

20 salvation was immaterial: Argentina, with some “real” political commitment. For politically engaged intellectual who Colombia, it was all the same. What Latin American literature was “good” twice transforms difference into a passionate call mattered was that something new had come over: because of its aesthetic innovation, and for equality. along to fill the gap left by a now waning also thanks to a sense that it was somehow First World modernism. Indeed, the Boom rooted in popular struggle. Even today, for most readers there is no supplied an apparent efflorescence of vitality other world literature that enjoys a similar and inventiveness “at a moment,” as critic The seal on the region’s cultural achievement aura of quality and even moral Gerald Martin explains, “when such was the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded, uprightness—except perhaps the modern creativity was in short supply internationally first, to Miguel Angel Asturias in 1967 and notion of “world literature” itself, in which [. . .] and critics repeatedly asked themselves Pablo Neruda in 1971, and later to García (by analogy with, say, “world music”) the whether the novel, in the age of the mass Márquez in 1982. The Prize citation on this virtues of Latin American cultural media, was now moribund.”5 In 1967, for latter occasion was framed as though the production are extended to the entire Third instance, novelist John Barth published a honor were awarded to the entire region World. Common conception has it that the much-discussed essay on “The Literature of rather than to one distinguished very notion of “bad Latin American Exhaustion,” a disquisition on “the used- representative. “For a long time,” it literature” is an oxymoron. Moreover, what upness of certain forms or exhaustion of proclaims, “Latin American literature has is most remarkable about this successful certain possibilities.”6 Yet the outlook is very shown a vigour as in few other literary branding of a continent’s culture is that it is, different in Barth’s follow-up essay, “The spheres. It has won acclaim in the cultural nonetheless, a branding: it is a marketing Literature of Replenishment,” published in life of today.”9 The citation then delineates operation, with extraordinary commercial 1980. Now the Latin American Boom has the two elements that make Latin American results. As his Nobel Prize citation notes, saved the day! Here for instance Barth’s literature so worthy in the popular and García Márquez for instance “achieved praise of One Hundred Years of Solitude is, critical imagination. First, the region unusual success,” with One Hundred Years critic Johnny Payne observes, “as gushy and combines “many impulses and traditions” of Solitude “translated into a large number unqualified as a back-cover blurb. It is ‘as that range from “folk culture, including oral of languages and [selling] millions of impressive a novel as has been written so far storytelling, reminiscences from old Indian copies.”11 The Nobel committee has in the second half of our century [. . . ]. culture, currents from Spanish baroque in explicitly to mark this success as “unusual” Praise be to the Spanish language and different epochs, influences from European in the context of its award of its highest imagination!’”7 Or rather, presumably, praise surrealism and other modernism” and that accolade. For once, literary value and be to Spanish in translation: Barth effaces collectively “are blended into a spiced and market value here go hand in hand. Or in the process of translation and promotion life-giving brew.” Second, however, this Martin’s words, “What really confused the through which García Márquez’s novel lands heady cocktail, “spiced and live-giving,” is issue” of the Boom was that its protagonists on his desk, and in which he himself further enhanced by a committed attachment “managed both to achieve critical participates so enthusiastically. Any hint at to the cause of social justice. “The violent recognition and to become bestsellers.” The the workings of the market in symbolic conflicts of political nature—social and Latin American Boom involved “the goods would undermine those very qualities economic—raise the temperature of the wholesale conversion of literary production that Barth claims to find in the Latin intellectual climate,” we are told. The into a commodity process” without, American text: its “organic originality” that, citation continues, again as though apparently, the loss of its aura of exclusivity in Payne’s gloss, could “‘magically’ recover proclaiming a collective award: “Like most predicted by a theorist such as Walter the conventions and artifices of the past, of the other important writers in the Latin Benjamin.12 while at the same time cross-fertilizing U.S. American world, García Márquez is strongly writing.”8 committed politically on the side of the poor It did not take long, however, for a backlash and the weak against oppression and to ensue, at least in the more refined circles Latin America and its literary production economic exploitation.”10 In short, the 1982 of cultural criticism. Perhaps most famously, was soon summarized in the two-word Nobel Prize is awarded less to an individual the British novelist Julian Barnes declared a formula “magical realism,” encapsulating writer, than to a continent that has given moratorium on magical realism only two both its “magical” inventiveness and the renewed life to world culture; and less to a years after García Márquez’s Nobel, and at notion that it was intimately intertwined writer than to the idea of the writer as a precisely the point at which this style, now

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the signature gesture of the new category of Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, for such realism offered a way of understanding a “postcolonial” writing, was sweeping all failings as its exclusivity, its cult of the whole new set of differences that suddenly before it. Barnes’s mocking suggestion is individual author, and for its “enslavement impinged upon Western consciousness. that: to the mechanisms of publicity.”16 No What is more, it offered a way of relating to wonder then that Latin Americanists should these novelties: it proposed that the act of A quota system is to be introduced on have turned almost wholesale either to more reading (or, more generally, cultural fiction set in South America. The challenging texts by more recondite authors consumption) could itself be a form of intention is to curb the spread of such as Diamela Eltit or Ricardo Piglia, or to solidarity. Reading (or perhaps merely package-tour baroque and heavy irony. non-literary or para-literary genres such as buying) a work produced elsewhere could be Ah, the propinquity of cheap life and testimonio and so (as in the title of one of a demonstration of acceptance and open- expensive principles, of religion and critic John Beverley’s books) “against mindedness in the midst of the postnational banditry, of surprising honour and literature” altogether.17 confusion that could otherwise overtake random cruelty. Ah, the daiquiri bird traditional middle-class sensibilities. which incubates its eggs on the wing; ah, Yet the strange result of this conjunction of Reading came to seem a political act. Hence the fredonna tree whose roots grow at circumstances is that those of us who teach the rise of “world” culture, as a particular the tips of its branches, and whose fibres Latin American literature for a living in variant on the global. By the late 1980s, assist the hunchback to impregnate by North America and Europe find ourselves in Western consumers could face the heady telepathy the haughty wife of the a peculiar double bind. We can put non- onrush of globalization by wearing their hacienda owner; ah, the opera house now canonical works on the syllabus, but so very Thai-style batik t-shirts, listening to overgrown by jungle. Permit me to rap often dampen the enthusiasm of students Moroccan music as remixed in England, on the table and murmur “Pass!”13 attracted to our classes precisely by the drinking free-trade Tanzanian coffee, and prospect that they will be reading what they reading Paulo Coelho. Culture always How did Latin American fiction become so regard in advance as the inventive and involves position-taking, and Latin American quickly a matter of ridicule? It is easy to edifying work of the Boom and its sequels. literature, charged as it was with a sense of blame its imitators. As critic Theo Tait Or we can teach García Márquez et. al., and political engagement (the brand of the real), points out, the 1980s saw “a flood of semi- perhaps even the still more popular avatars offered a paradigmatic market choice for supernatural sagas [. . .] released all over the such as Isabel Allende or Laura Esquivel, but those who felt vaguely ill at ease with their world—full of omens, prodigies, legendary never quite without the sense that we are, own self-consciousness as the economic feats, hallucinatory exaggerations, fairytale however reluctantly, embracing a “bad” beneficiaries of unequal trade. It is, in short, motifs, strange coincidences and Latin American literature only because the an important mode of what political overdeveloped sense-organs.”14 Tait even students think it will do them some good. philosopher Jacques Rancière would term understates the case when he observes that the reconfiguration of the sensible (feeling “with time and overuse, artistic style Let us approach bad Latin American itself) in postmodern times.18 Or to put this degenerates into mannerism.” In fact, literature a little less abashedly, first by another way: if, as critic Idelber Avelar magical realism was very soon subject to understanding its continued appeal, and argues, in Latin America the Boom’s success pastiche, and from there it was but a short second by perhaps reconsidering its (by now) served as compensation for economic and step to Barnes’s parody. Moreover, as Tait middlebrow utopianism. For it is a prime political underdevelopment; outside of Latin also comments, magical realism was instance of what we could call liberal, well- America precisely this same literature (and particularly vulnerable to such intentioned exoticism, a means by which to its successors) functioned according to a transmutations. In that “wonder and recognize and negotiate difference. In the similar logic of compensation, but now to novelty were always an important part of its context of the rapid globalization of culture make up for overdevelopment.19 appeal, [. . .] the style had a built-in and communications technologies of which obsolescence: the decline into artificial the rise of Latin American literature was Finally, then, Latin American literature— gesture and cheap exoticism was itself a part (with novels written by compensation or comfort in the guise of self- inevitable.”15 Meanwhile, in Latin America Colombians in Mexico, published in improvement—has become the very epitome itself the politics of the Boom had long been Barcelona, translated in London, and of middlebrow culture. No wonder it under fire, not least from the influential making bestseller lists in New York), magical should have been so soon scorned by writers

22 such as Julian Barnes, and also the object of 2 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 30. Bibliography wary regard by Latin American and Latin Americanist critics themselves. Like the 3 Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, 6. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: classic middlebrow culture of the 1950s and Reflections on the Origin and Spread of 4 1960s as described by cultural critic Janice Quoted. in advertising material, New York Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Times, May 6, 1970, 40; see also Kennedy, Radway, Latin American literature provides “Socialist Realism.” Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Edited “a kind of social pedagogy for a growing by J. Dover Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge class fraction of professionals, managers, and 5 Martin, “Boom, Yes; ‘New’ Novel, No,” 53. University Press, 1935. information workers,” a “sentimental education” to guide them through, now, not 6 Barth, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” 310. Avelar, Idelber. The Untimely Present: so much modernity and modernization as Not that exhaustion is necessarily negative in Postdictatorial Latin American Fiction and the postmodernity and globalization.20 It Barth’s view: he champions Samuel Beckett Task of Mourning. Durham, NC: Duke mobilizes an “enthusiasm for sentiment,” a and, indeed, Jorge Luis Borges because they University Press, 1999. way of reading “completely suffused by “paradoxically turn the felt ultimacies of our feeling and affect.”21 At the same time, it time into material and means for [their] work” Barnes, Julian. Flaubert’s Parrot. London: (317). Jonathan Cape, 1984. offers a reconversion of value: if the Boom was striking originally for the way in which 7 Payne, Conquest of the New Word, 17. Barth, John. “The Literature of Exhaustion.” In it transmuted aesthetic value into Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology, commercial value without, for all that, 8 Ibid. edited by Niall Lucy, 310-21. Oxford: Blackwell, apparently destroying the aura of the work 2000. of art, perhaps the post-Boom, or the Boom’s 9 Gyllensten, “Presentation Speech.” legacy, has been the magical transmutation Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of market value into political reassurance, 10 Ibid. of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, the purchase of a sense of engaged solidarity edited by Hannah Arendt and translated by 11 through the exercise of cultural taste. But it Ibid. Harry Zohn, 217-51. New York: Schocken, 1968. is not, in this sense, all that different from 12 Martin, “Boom, Yes; ‘New’ Novel, No,” 54. testimonio as read even by the most anti- See Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Beverley, John. Against Literature. Minneapolis: literary of proponents of Latin American Mechanical Reproduction.” University of Minnesota Press, 1993. cultural studies. And rather than partaking in a new round of value judgments in which 13 Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot, 99. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New some texts would always end up better than edition. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. others, perhaps we can turn around the 14 Tait, “Flame-Broiled Whopper.” New York: Zone, 1996. liberal desire to cast difference as 15 (in)equality; we can examine and teach bad Ibid. Gyllensten, Lars. “Presentation Speech.” The Latin American literature as symptom of Nobel Prize in Literature 1982. 16 Rama, “Carta de Angel Rama a Zona http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laure unfulfilled desires in the global North as Franca,” 15. See also Rama, “Angel Rama tira ates/1982/presentation-speech.html. much as the South. At stake is a la piedra . . .” redistribution of the sensible that precedes Kennedy, William. “Socialist Realism.” PEN any struggle over how what is sensed is to be 17 Beverley, Against Literature. America Journal 6. evaluated or weighed. http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/138 18 Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics. /prmID/606.

Endnotes 19 Avelar, The Untimely Present, 30-31. Kracauer, Siegfried. The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Edited and translated by 1 Kracauer, The Mass Ornament. Guy Debord 20 Radway, A Feeling for Books, 15, 17. Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard subsequently develops a similar, albeit much University Press, 1995. broader, argument in The Society of the 21 Ibid., 29, 33. Spectacle.

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Martin, Gerald. “Boom, Yes; ‘New’ Novel, No: Overcoming Colonialism and the urban indigenous in Mexico City Further Reflections on the Optical Illusions of Writing in Indigenous Languages and Lima. In Mexico, the colonization of the 1960s in Latin America.” Bulletin of Latin the Lacandon jungle by landless peasants in American Research 3, no. 2 (1984): 53-63. by JEAN FRANCO the 1980s brought together Tzotziles, Columbia University Tajobales, and other groups, many of whom Payne, Johnny. Conquest of the New Word: [email protected] would join the Zapatista army. In 1994 Experimental Fiction and Translation in the when the Zapatistas emerged from the Americas. Austin: University of Texas Press, The Argentine critic, Josefina Ludmer, 1993. Lacandon forest and took over several recently pointed out that with globalization municipalities, they addressed the Rama, Angel. “Angel Rama tira la piedra . . .” the parameters of Latin American literature inhabitants in the six indigenous languages Zona Franca 14 (1972): 15-17. and literary studies have totally changed. of the region. Traditional divisions between national and ______“Carta de Angel Rama a Zona cosmopolitan realism, between realism and The number of people speaking indigenous Franca: El Boom establece expresamente un avant-garde, between pure literature and languages varies considerably: millions speak recorte empobrecedor de nuestras letras, que las social literature have disappeared and even Quechua and only a few hundred puapua, a deforma y traiciona.” Zona Franca 16 (1972): the difference between historical reality and language of Baja California. Moreover, 10-15. fiction may disappear. The distinctions that national policies have given rise to very placed high culture over popular cultures, Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics: The different linguistic environments. In the literary language over dialect, metropolis Distribution of the Sensible. Translated by worst cases, like that of El Salvador Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum, 2004. over province and thus tacitly affirmed class, following the Matanza of 1931 in which gender and racial inequalities have been thousands of indigenous were slaughtered in Tait, Theo. “Flame-Broiled Whopper.” Review of challenged in many ways, the most striking the wake of a rebellion, the native language Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown. London of which is the continent-wide emergence of was suppressed and is only now being Review of Books (October 6, 2005). literature in indigenous languages that relearned. Speakers of indigenous languages extends from the Mapuche in the south to were made to feel inferior. In the life story the Tahahumara in Northern Mexico, from of the Peruvian Gregorio Condori Mamani, the Tupi-Guaraní to the Nahuas. Languages transcribed from the Quechua, Condori that were scheduled to disappear with describes himself as sightless and dumb globalization, and that had long been because he did not have access to writing marginalized by imperial Spanish are not and did not speak Spanish even after a spell only defended by native speakers but are in the army where officers prohibited the taught in universities and reinvigorated by speaking of Quechua. During the civil war indigenous writers. in Guatemala in the eighties, the army tried to prohibit the speaking of native tongues It was in 1992 that representatives of 120 and the wearing of native dress. At the indigenous peoples met in Quito to organize other extreme is Paraguay, a country a protest against the quincentennial officially bilingual in Spanish and Guaraní. celebrations of Columbus’s discovery of In Mexico, where there may be as many as America and called for, among other things, 60 indigenous languages, nahua has now a defense of native languages, recognizing been incorporated into University courses that the subordination of native languages to and there has been official support for Spanish ratified the long-standing oppression workshops and conferences in many of the of the originary inhabitants of the continent. languages. In Chile, the mapuche have a Paradoxically this defense of native radio program in mapudungun. Peoples languages has occurred at a time of dispersal who, in the past, were not supposed to have when emigration is creating new identities, writing much less a literature are now such as the binational Mixteca in California attending writing workshops, reciting poetry

24 at meetings and publishing in anthologies. lost too rapidly. But there is also a new according to Jeffrey Rubin, what When Microsoft recently announced a writing that goes beyond the transmission of postcolonial development might have looked program in mapudungun, the language of traditions to explore the indigenous like if indigenous and Western cultures had the mapuche, there was a public protest not experience within modernity. In Mexico, met on more equal terms, not necessarily a against the technology as such, but against thanks to the labor of non-indigenous rejection of the Western or the modern nor a what was termed the intellectual piracy of a intellectuals, especially the poets Carlos reinforcing of geographical and cultural project that had been carried forward Montemayor and Jaimes Sabines, careful borders between local and outside, but without any participation by the mapuche attention has been paid to the transcription rather a creation of multiple modernities by themselves. of indigenous languages into phonetic script. means of non-Western knowledge and style2. Montemayor’s anthology La voz profunda Thus even before the Zapatista army One cannot write in an indigenous language which has been published in a bilingual emerged from the Lacandon jungle in 1994 without calling up the whole history of edition in Spanish and indigenous languages and addressed meetings in six indigenous colonialism, given the power relations that included essays, poems and stories1. languages, COCEI had already adopted the dictated the first and many subsequent zapotec language at its meetings, using the transcriptions of Native American texts into Because of the extraordinary variety of customs and adornments of zapotec ritual phonic writing. The post-conquest indigenous languages, I will focus two of the and drawing on the historical memory of imposition of castellano in the service of the most prolific: zapotec literature in Mexico past rebellions. The journal, Guchach Reza state which controlled official history and literature in mapudungun in Chile, both often illustrated by the painter, Francisco relegated orally-transmitted cultures to an of which are rooted in a history of resistance Toledo and his friends, brought together inferior category outside the lettered city. to the state. zapotec writing with critical writing by The first grammars and dictionaries of native foreign intellectuals, an important languages were instruments in the work of The zapotec spoken in the Isthmus of consideration when taking into account the conversion. In the nineteenth century Tehuantepec is the only indigenous language often restricted notion of indigenous transcription of native languages fell into the of Mexico to have a substantial modern cultures. hands of foreigners, given the lack of interest literary tradition, thanks in part to its among the lettered classes; thus, for instance, political history. Juchitlan, its regional Victor de la Cruz, a zapotec poet and editor Europeans disputed the grammar and capital, is a city with a history of rebellion of the 1983 anthology, Flor de la palabra transcription of the Quechua alphabet. In that goes back to the fight against Aztec (Flower of the Word), was well aware of the the last century, the evangelical work of the domination and it has a modern indigenous difficulties of anthologizing a literature that Summer Institute of Linguistics imposed intellectual tradition dating back to the had not yet been recognized as such. In one ideological preference; it is interesting that twenties and thirties when a group of of his best-known poems, Tu laanu. Tu lanu the Zapotec dictionary it published was intellectuals living in Mexico, most notably (Who are we? What is our name?), he addressed to the needs of three groups: the Andrés Henestrosa, wrote some of their represents writing as a form of alienation, as indigenous needing to learn Spanish; the work in zapotec. But the contemporary an empty house in which there is no listener official who needs to know the language; renaissance surely dates from the political and therefore no presence. The word on and thirdly, linguists and anthropologists. movement of the 1980s. In 1981, the paper cannot reproduce voice. “Why does There is no mention of any cultural Coalition of Workers, Peasants and Students one write on paper/ Instead of on the production by the Zapotecs themselves. of the Isthmus (COCEI) put into practice earth?” the poet asks. “Whence came this self-government and cultural revival. In its paper that imprison our word/ the word our Initially writing was encouraged because of two years in office before being dismissed by fathers carved on stones/that they sang in the the need to preserve culture that was in the central government in 1983, an action night when they danced?” Describing danger of being eroded or lost because of that was met by widespread protest, COCEI writing as a second language which kills the emigration and dispersal. The tzotzil writer, supported a literacy campaign, a radio native tongue, he ends the poem by asking Pérez Fernández, states that one of the great station, publications and a bookstore. The again, “Who are we? What is our name?” preoccupations of the elders and leaders of zapotec language became the preferred mode What Victor de la Cruz underscores is that the communities is that most of our customs, of communication, even among some non- the community cannot be present in writing traditions and ancestral knowledge are being indigenous citizens. Its policy exemplified, as it is in orally transmitted cultures. This

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divided self is, not surprisingly, a feature of who identified themselves as belonging to a bearing the responsibility of a marginalized much indigenous poetry. The Yucatecan particular place or as participating in people. The poet and musician Leonel Maya poet, Briceida Cueva Cob in a poem particular rituals but not necessarily Lienlaf in an interview described writing in with the title Yan a bin xook (You will go to according to purely racial criteria. mapudungun as a political challenge school), while accepting schooling finds her “…because we cannot forget that thanks to true reflection in the family hearth where the The mapuches represent a challenge to the writing they seized our lands and deceived burning fire mirrors her true self. The verse state for several reasons—because of their us. For us, for mapuche culture, the writing “You will cross the threshold of your language, their social organization and their process is a two-edged sword... My work is imagination/ and go into your own house/ land claims. “Mapu” means land and “che” an eighty percent turn towards orality. For without having to knock on the door” people and they see as their prime mission this reason, my publications have less to do suggests the radical difference between the the defense of the environment. Their with books than with oral spaces for society which the girl needs a permit to enter language is mapudungun (or collective development. The development of and the true self reflected in the native mapuchezungun). Their basic political unit my poetry has to do with the collectivity. hearth. is headed by the lonko (the political leader For this reason too documentaries have been of the community) and the machi, the part of my work for they have to do with Like zapotec writing, the writing of the religious leader, who is often a woman who orality. Poetry only exists inasmuch as mapuche poets in Chile has been strongly performs healing rituals and conducts the words can be shared3.” He goes on to influenced by the militant resistance to the ceremonial life of the community. But in underscore that territoriality is not only the state which has persistently denied the today’s world the mapuche increasingly use land we see and inhabit but the spirit that indigenous component of the nation. In the modern means of communication, especially inhabits it. Mapuche poetry often evokes 1940s when Pablo Neruda tried to found a radio which serves as a way of disseminating past struggles as well as the foundation myth literary journal using the name Araucania mapudungun and, of course, the Internet. that recounts the primordial struggle (the old name for mapuche territory), he was between the mountain, Tren Tren, and Kai ordered to change the title. The Pinochet Mapuche poetry often addresses the long Kai, the hostile oceanic force. One of the government revoked mapuche land rights resistance of the mapuches to the Spaniards great contemporary poems, “i” (Song), and at the present time there is militant and the Chilean state, the loss and recovery transposes this legend into an account of her resistance to government licensed dam of language and memory after the wars of personal journey from inheriting a broken projects which affect the environment. As extermination and the sense of mutilation tradition to her becoming a machi. The recently as 1992 when Chile was represented and loss that comes with the transfer of poem is not written in mapudugun but code at the World Fair in Seville by a dazzling voice into writing. One of the best known switches between chedungun (a variant of iceberg, the country emphasizes its whiteness mapuche writers, Elicura Chihuailaf, in his mapudungun spoken in the Huilliche region) as if the indigenous did not exist. Textbooks Confidential Message to the Chilean people and Spanish. The mixture of language, mention their subjugation in the nineteenth which is part memoir, part history and part according to one critic, demonstrates the century but tend to ignore their recent political tract, writes of Nvtram, the art of impossibility of speaking a single history, as if to assume their absorption into speech linked to historical memory. He language...and implies readers who are the modern state. Yet over a million people describes mapudungun poetry as being willing to inhabit this plural space. identify themselves as mapuche and half of between dream and memory—dream being them live in urban areas. Because they have an important element of mapuche culture. If I have stressed zapotec and mapudungun, been under attack and removed from their The machi (male or female) intervenes it is because these languages have been lands, their identity is constantly being between the visible and invisible world and effective in reaching beyond the community renegotiated so that what constitutes the along with the lonko or Genpin Alonko, the while remaining true to their history and mapuche self (Mapuchengen) is defined in possessor of speech, is the central figure in preoccupations. Nowadays, thanks to the many different ways and can be quite the community. Chihauilaf describes himself Internet, even the smallest linguistic volatile. In 1993 the state passed an as an oralitor, underscoring the dual nature community can reach an international indigenous law which demanded proof of of his mission to link oral tradition and public. The inequality that had forced the mapuche identity for land claims, thus written communication and to recognize a marginalization of orally transmitted placing bureaucratic criteria on a people brotherhood of world literature while cultures is being erased not only by the

26 transcription of languages into phonetic Inscriptions of Inequality in Latin American have any nominal raises between 1995 and script but by technologies that have given a Literary and Cultural Studies 2002—you begin to get a sense of how new lease of life to orally transmitted damaging the privatization period was to culture. by IDELBER AVELAR education. Even in FHC’s more socially Tulane University conscious version—as opposed to, say, [email protected] Menem’s wholesale liquidation of Argentina Endnotes or Fujimori’s ransacking of Peru— One can speak today—let us see for how privatization included an explicit attack on 1 There is a bilingual edition in English and long—of inequality as something that has the concept of education as a common good indigenous languages: Words of the True actually been going down in parts of Latin that a society may choose to provide to all People, Carlos Montemayor and Donald America. The most impressive figure may be its members. Frischmann, eds. (Austin, Texas: 2004) the 33 percent of all poor Brazilian families who have risen to the middle class since 2 Jeffrey Rubin, Decentering the Regime. Privatization also affected cultural policy and Ethnicity, Radicalism and Democracy in Lula’s inauguration in 2003. Precarious as Latin American Cultural Studies produced Juchitlan, Mexico (Durham: Duke University all literacy numbers tend to be, Venezuela’s what was perhaps the definitive critical Press, 1997), 1 and Bolivia’s nominal reduction of their reflection on its consequences, George illiteracy rates to zero deserves to be Yúdice’s The Expediency of Culture (2002). 3 Both these poets are included in an anthology celebrated. According to Venezuela’s Yúdice’s study notes how culture has in English translation compiled by Cecilia National Institute of Statistics, 50.5 percent acquired a ubiquitous role as mediator, one Vicua and translated by John Bierhorst. See of Venezuelans lived below the poverty line whose “conservative” or “emancipatory” Ul: Four Mapuche Poets (Pittsburgh: Latin in 1999. By 2007, that number was down American Literary Review Press, 1998) character is determined through complex to 31.5 percent. The relationship established social interactions. The Expediency of with national patrimony by countries such as Culture is also representative of a Ecuador, Bolivia, and more recently phenomenon specific of the past decade: the Paraguay has at least stopped the bleeding of trilingual publication of scholarship in decades-long transfers of wealth from the Spanish America, the United States and poor to the rich. All of these governments Brazil, an editorial trend that has made of have their problems and some—like “Latin American Cultural and Literary Chávez’s—display unmistakably Studies” something quite distinct from what authoritarian features. But the gains are also it was a decade ago. It has established a real. dialogue in terms more horizontal than those viable back when some subfields in the Recent years have made visible the extent of United States were dominated by the anxiety the devastation left by the processes over their own privileged position vis-à-vis euphemistically designated as neoliberalism the continent they studied. Other instances or privatization. What stares the analyst in of this welcome editorial development are the face is not the modest gains of recent Sylvia Molloy’s At Face Value: center-left governments, but the depth of the Autobiographical Writing in Spanish destruction caused by the defunding of the America (1991), Fondo de Cultura public sector and the deregulation of private Económica, 2001, Argos, 2004; Doris businesses after the 1980s. Education, Sommer’s Foundational Fictions (1993), culture, and literature are measures of how Fondo, 2004, UFMG, 2004; Julio Ramos’s pervasive the onslaught was. When you Desencuentros de la modernidad en look at how Brazil’s federal university system América Latina, 1989 Spanish edition was treated by Fernando Henrique translated at Duke (1999) and UFMG Cardoso’s government—no expansion in the (2008); my own Untimely Present (1999), student body took place and faculty did not Cuarto Propio, 2000, UFMG, 2003; and

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Josefina Ludmer’s El cuerpo del delito: Un something that was almost a tic in certain works such as Argentine Gonzalo Aguilar’s manual (1999), Pittsburgh, 2004, UFMG, debates of the 1980s and 90s. These studies Poesía concreta brasileña: Las vanguardias 2002, among others. tend to be meticulously specific, object- en la encrucijada modernista (2003), a driven pieces of scholarship, usually monumental synthesis that goes far beyond, Auspiciously, this has not been a one-way anchored in one or two national traditions I believe, any single study of Concretism road in which only books by U.S.-based (or in a regional one, e.g. Caribbean, Andes) done in Brazil in the past 50 years. scholars get disseminated. Works by Nelly rather than in some fiction of “Latin Richard, Beatriz Sarlo, Néstor García America.” They are not “anti-theoretical” Horacio Legrás’s Literature and Subjection Canclini, Gonzalo Aguilar, and other at all, but their theoretical concepts tend to (2008) will be read in years to come, as its Spanish America-based scholars have also emerge inductively, during, not before the detailed engagement with novelists such as appeared in English and Portuguese, while interpretive act takes place. The ones that Juan José Saer and Roa Bastos demonstrates Brazilians Roberto Schwarz, Silviano have been particularly inspiring to me that the only Subaltern Studies that literature Santiago, and Flora Süssekind have seen further share the feature of devoting thought may be able to offer is the mapping of the their work appear in Spanish and English. to the relations between “real” (political, rhetoric of subalternization; in that sense it As visible above, a notable place here economic) and rhetorical (literary, plastic) makes a nice counterpoint to John Beverley’s belongs to the Federal University of Minas manifestations of inequality. Subalternity and Representation (1999), Gerais Press, which has brought much which synthesized a previous way of English- and Spanish-language Latin Jens Andermann’s The Optic of the State: thinking about those problems in Latin American Cultural Studies scholarship into Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil American Cultural Studies. Legrás’s book is Portuguese (along with Argos, which has (2007) moves that debate to an institutional also a healthy reminder that the effects of published, in addition to Molloy, other terrain and shows how at the turn of the 20th transculturation are never reducible to its leading essayists such as Graciela Montaldo). century those two states constructed a visual uses by economic and political elites (p. 18), These editorial events should not go field through museums, cartography, and a premise that makes possible a less stifling, unrecorded when one assesses the state of other institutions. The museum’s “material more open field of inquiry than the one the discipline in the United States and theater of sovereignty” (p.22) assembled allowed by the tired discussions over which discusses, for example, how to “incorporate practices related to the scientific project of concept (mestizaje, transculturation, Brazil into Latin American Studies.” But the the time as well as with state massacres and hybridity, etc.) to privilege in interpreting fact is that they do. No matter how expeditions, a link also featured in a cultural exchanges. horizontal certain dialogues may have contemporary classic in the field such as become, some neocolonial habits die hard. Gabriela Nouzeille’s Ficciones somáticas: In Gender Studies, both the documentation Naturalismo, Nacionalismo y políticas of exclusion—be it of women or gay or I believe most colleagues would agree that in médicas del cuerpo (Argentina 1880-1910) lesbian or transgendered subjects—and the the United States the discipline has not been (2000). Andermann’s work is also mapping of transgressive gestures by the dominated by one set of debates such as auspicious in exemplifying a kind of cross- excluded coexist with more multifaceted those that revolved around testimonio vs. national collaboration that has become more readings, where the normalizing / literature, mestizaje vs. transculturation vs. common in recent years—in this case, his conservative or emancipatory / liberating hybridity, or Subaltern vs. Cultural Studies. sustained dialogue with Álvaro Fernández components of gender practices are not given This is certainly a good thing, but it makes Bravo, whose Literatura y frontera: Procesos in advance. Jean Franco and Sylvia Molloy, totalizing evaluative efforts difficult, perhaps de territorialización en las culturas especially, have made that qualitative leap futile. At any rate, I tend to disagree with argentinas y chilena del siglo XIX (1999) possible, by leaving legacies of engagements apocalyptic assessments of the field, and and later articles are key pieces in the with the gendering of Latin American among the many works of the past decade conversation. Some novel things have lettered culture that are both inspired by that I find deserving of note, most share an happened in this regard, with the appearance social justice and attentive to the intricacies interesting feature: they tend not to replicate of books by scholars who venture beyond of the literary text. (Molloy’s foremost the ideological gesture of taking a their national boundaries and end up not contribution to that legacy in the past decade metacritical stance as a priori lens whose “making a contribution,” but reshaping an may well have been her novel El común validity the object would then confirm, entire subfield in another country. I think of olvido, an implacable staging of a masculine

28 voice.) At least two generations of Latin Presses such as Argentina’s Feminaria and operative piece in the real relations between American(ist) feminists, from Nelly Richard Chile’s Cuarto Propio, as well as journals the state and the body politic. Again, that to Mary Louise Pratt, from Ileana Rodríguez such as Mexico’s Fem, have attested to the process is—as Ludmer would agree—highly to Kathleen Newman, have continued that continuous vitality of feminist scholarship in specific to Argentina, due to the role played work. In the past decade, some of the Latin America. by lettered culture in the constitution of the important landmarks in Gender Studies have country’s modern state, unparalleled and been Licia Fiol-Matta’s study of Gabriela About Early Modern Studies I am less unknown, say, in Brazil or Peru. Mistral, A Queer Mother for the Nation equipped to opine, but in conversations with Systematically, then, we find much of the (2002), the collective Chicana Feminisms colleagues such as John Charles, whose own best scholarship on Latin America literature (2003), Juana María Rodríguez’s powerful monograph on Andean appropriations of not necessarily thinking in terms of “Latin Queer Latinidad (2003) and Arnaldo Cruz- literacy will give a lot of food for thought America” at all. Many Area Studies Malavé’s always sophisticated readings, as in when it comes out, I sense that the best programs in the United States would do well his Queer Latino Testimonio (2007) or in recent studies have also displayed the same to reflect on that fact. his volume coedited with Martin geographical and historical embeddedness, as Malalansan, Queer Globalizations (2002). opposed to more ideological (pan-indigenist, Revisiting the 1960s has inspired good work. pan-Latin Americanist or Third Worldist) For its sophistication, Diana Sorensen’s A To the field delimited by luminaries such as gestures. Colonial Studies can only be Turbulent Decade Remembered: Scenes from Franco and Molloy, younger scholars such as “political” if it is, first, rigorous in its the Latin American Sixties (Stanford, 2007) José Quiroga and Robert Irwin have added historiography and meticulously grounded in deserves mention, as it produces what indispensable books. Again, it is notable its object. Again with the caveat that I am a appeared impossible a few years ago: an how nationally grounded they have tended distant, lay observer when it comes to Early innovative recasting of the Spanish American to be. In Quiroga’s Cuban Palimpsests Modern Studies, my sense is that this boom in ways that replicate neither its (2005), gender is a realm where highly awareness is now more solidly established in celebratory self-perception nor later critiques unique struggles around Cuban identity, the field than it had been in a recent past. of it. Sorensen accomplishes it with an eye culture, and politics take place. Likewise, to the boom’s duplicitous nature as an Irwin’s Mexican Masculinities (2003) tackles A few questions have stood out in experience of decline and inauguration. As issues around borders, not only the monographic studies of modern literature. with most good literary criticism, her volume geographical one, but also those separating, Crime, violence, punishment, and exclusion thoroughly thinks through the relations for example, homo- from heteroeroticism. have represented perhaps the dominant between the rhetorical and the social They manifest themselves in rather specific cluster, as evidenced by excellent books such dimensions. Another set of period studies is forms in Mexico, due not only to its location as Juan Dabove’s Nightmares of the Lettered the postdictatorial scholarship on the but also to the singularity of its City: Banditry and Literature in Latin Southern Cone nations, the synthesis of revolutionary process. Other landmarks in America, 1816-1929 and Glen Close’s which in the past decade was advanced by Queer Studies, going back to Jorge Salessi’s Contemporary Hispanic Crime Fiction: A Sandra Lorenzano’s Escrituras de la contemporary classic Médicos, maleantes y Discourse on Urban Violence, both tributary sobrevivencia (2001), Saudades (2007), and maricas (1995), include Daniel Balderston’s to a contemporary classic mentioned above, Políticas de la memoria (coedited with Ralph mapping of homosexuality in literature in a Josefina Ludmer’s El cuerpo del delito: Un Buchenhorst, 2007), Beatriz Sarlo’s Tiempo host of essays and edited volumes, and in his manual. Ludmer’s is a definitive study of the pasado (2005) and Escritos sobre literatura Deseo, cicatriz luminosa: Ensayos sobre historical role that—in Horacio Legrás’s argentina (2007), and Miguel Dalmaroni’s homosexualidades latinoamericanas (2004). words—“the aesthetic representation of La palabra justa. Literatura, crítica y Important works in masculinity / gay studies crime has come to play in relationship to memoria en Argentina (1960–2002). If we have also been done for the Colonial both the consolidation of the state and the go back in the period studies to the early 20th period—see Pete Sigal’s edited volume emergence of a ‘people’.” What sets it apart century, Rubén Gallo’s Mexican Modernity: Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in from much previous scholarship is that crime The Avant-garde and the Technological Colonial Latin America as the inquiry appears not a theme to be sought and Revolution (2007) certainly deserves a place around gender goes through as interesting a explained in literature, but as something that of distinction, for its skillful, simultaneous moment now as any it had earlier enjoyed. allows literature to become a dispositif, an

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handling of aesthetic and historical Perspectivas eco-críticas latinoamericanas naturalistas y geógrafos? ¿Quién que haya questions. Conocimientos transpuestos recuperados leído los ya clásicos libros de Antonello Gerbi puede dudar del lugar central que la In Critical Race Studies, much has been por ILEANA RODRÍGUEZ naturaleza ocupa en las relaciones written in the past decade, but I would single Ohio State University conflictivas entre los europeos y los out two books: Antonio Risério’s A utopia [email protected] americanos? ¿Y qué decir del libro de brasileira e os movimentos negros (2007) Michel Foucault El orden de las cosas que and Eleuterio Santiago-Díaz’s Escritura La eco-crítica se define como el estudio de nos habla de las crisis de las nomenclaturas afropuertorriqueña y modernidad (2007). las relaciones entre la cultura y su medio europeas en su contacto con las especies Risério’s is a powerful challenge to the ambiente natural y social. El desarrollo de naturales de este continente que vinieron importation of binary U.S. racial paradigms tal crítica se predica sobre el conocimiento primero a desordenar y luego a reorganizar into Brazil, written not from a conservative de que todo está interrelacionado y sobre el todo el conocimiento europeo precisamente standpoint but by an essayist of a lifelong reconocimiento de la relevancia de los sobre lo natural? De la misma manera engagement with black and mestiço Brazilian problemas de la representación y podemos recordar todos los textos sobre la cultures. Santiago-Díaz’s monograph on administración de lo natural en relación al pampa, la selva, la llanura, los campos de Afro-Puerto Rican Vieques writer Carmelo todo social, humano. La eco-crítica pone caña de azúcar, las bananeras, las Rodríguez Torres, the most sophisticated primero en escena los textos que hablan de tabacaleras, la explotación del caucho, que literary analysis of race, diaspora, modernity, estos asuntos y luego propone una reflexión marcaron toda la literatura social de la and imperialism I have read in a while, teórica sobre los mismos. Mas, si la eco- modernidad temprana en nuestras incipientes documents how ellipsis has been at the crítica está hoy por hoy relacionada con los repúblicas. ¿Y quién puede ignorar, hoy por center of the literature produced in Vieques’ movimientos ambientalistas, las filosofías hoy, la importancia de la coca en las unique neocolonial conditions. holísticas sobre la naturaleza y su relación literaturas y culturas del presente? El corpus con lo social-cultural son de larga raigambre letrado en su totalidad está marcado por esta This is certainly a partial assessment, framed indígena en la América Latina. preocupación no llamada eco-crítica pero by my own limits, focus, and preferences, que puede bien subsumirse en ella. but it does suggest that the best works in the Nadie puede dudar que los estudios críticos field have tended to combine social and de la cultura latinoamericana siempre han Es posible considerar que muchos críticos rhetorical questions in dynamic, innovative puesto en escena las relaciones entre lo culturales, sobre todo aquellos afectos a ways. In mapping the relations between real humano y lo natural, pero el tenor de los aferrarse a las tradiciones imperantes en la and symbolic dimensions, they have also mismos estudios cambia de ángulo de visión era de las formaciones nacionales, tended to share a local character, an object- según las urgencias de época. Yo me consideren la eco-crítica como una moda driven embeddedness that makes some atrevería a decir que los estudios coloniales más de las academias norteamericanas, a earlier—and current—debates on “Latin primero y los estudios postcoloniales pesar de que los ejemplares trabajos America” appear a bit byzantine and recientemente pueden bien entenderse dentro contemporáneos de bolivianos, unfruitful. de la rúbrica eco-crítica, como también guatemaltecos, y colombianos demuestran lo pueden bien serlo los estudios sobre la contrario. No voy a negar que el sesgo es modernidad latinoamericana y su tránsito diferente, que la eco-crítica está más ligada hacia la postmodernidad. Digo esto porque al ambientalismo que a la explotación del ¿quién no ha oído siquiera hablar del trabajo humano, pero eso no quita que el animismo de las culturas indígenas y quien ímpetu sea el mismo, lo político-social. Y en no recuerda el arduo trabajo de los esto, los trabajos de los latinoamericanistas exploradores a principios de los coinciden con los de la eco-crítica en el enfrentamientos euro-americanos en su análisis de los conflictos y tensiones creados denodado esfuerzo primero por recorrer los por la modernidad a nivel de lo natural- paisajes humanos y naturales, y después por social. Creo que bien podríamos argumentar clasificar y controlar las especies que hicieran que la eco-crítica es una posición contra el primero veedores y oidores y más tarde desarrollismo, contra los aspectos negativos

30 de la modernidad, contra la destrucción de posibilidades no realizadas cuya fuerza americanas, la naturaleza deviene empresa, medio-ambientes naturales para favorecer las radica en crear nuevos lenguajes, lógicas, frontera, en el sentido inglés de la palabra, industrias extractivas, contra el uso y abuso tradiciones—utópicas por el momento en la esto es, tierra virgen, tierra de nadie, libre de de las plantas para producir estupefacientes. medida que sólo existen en la imaginación. explorar. Por eso propongo que los El trabajo de Arturo Escobar, para El envés de estos imaginarios es apocalíptico documentos primarios y secundarios de la mencionar sólo uno, es ejemplar en este y profetiza el fin del planeta—holocaustos colonización constituyen genealogías de los aspecto. Mi propio trabajo es de este tenor nucleares, calentamientos globales, proyectos de investigación para el desarrollo puesto que ciertamente pone en escena la contaminaciones sin retroceso, destrucción que podemos leer en las universidades y relación entre naturaleza y sociedad, de capas de ozono, lluvias ácidas, tierras agencias que propician tales empeños. naturaleza y conocimiento, naturaleza y yermas, aguas contaminadas, especies en política y mis estudios se apoyan en enormes extinción, uso de alimentos como Este proyecto me enseñó a ver la naturaleza genealogías conformadoras de grandes combustible. Por eso las diferentes desde una multitud de articulaciones. Pude campos disciplinarios. disciplinas vuelven a la idea del respeto a la constatar la importancia que la tierra/lo tierra, a la madre naturaleza, y proponen un natural tenía para la cultura en general. La eco-crítica nos permite re-evaluar los desarrollo respetuoso. Así lo vemos en las Aprendí cómo la guerra obstruye la diferentes proyectos transcontinentales, escuelas que hablan de desarrollos producción de alimentos y cómo la valorar los recursos naturales como recursos alternativos, de modernidades periféricas, de destrucción de la tierra y la alteración de los sociales, y evaluar epistemologías alternas, las tensiones de la modernidad. ciclos de producción y el cambio en el tipo tal las indígenas y sus contratos culturales de cosechas es central al proyecto de con lo natural. Estas constituyen Mi trabajo ciertamente bordea los marcos de subyugación colonial. El hambre es pues paradigmas contrarios a la explotación tal crítica. En mi libro, Transatlantic una manera de subyugar. Imposible no ligar irrespetuosa de los recursos naturales. Si se Topographies, la naturaleza es la esta idea con la producción de etanol en el quiere, con la eco-crítica hay un retorno a protagonista principal en la medida que es presente y el uso del maíz con propósitos formas animistas del pasado, a tradiciones su apreciación, la interrelación que los energéticos. Cómo no ver la producción de pastoriles, virgilianas, que, no obstante, procesos culturales tienen con ella, lo que va distopías culturales, ciencia ficción en la que responden a necesidades humana inherentes, moldeando las formaciones sociales. La alimentar máquinas es primario y antecede a mecanismos de admonición y de tierra, la naturaleza, los recursos naturales, la alimentación de las personas. Y cómo no supervivencia. Idealizar las comunidades ciertamente constituyen el trasfondo que articular estas ideas distópicas a las de orgánicas del pasado, relevar lo prístino, apoya las formaciones sociales coloniales y Miguel Ángel Asturias y su personaje natural, impoluto, responde a imaginarios modernas. Cuando yo emprendí esta Machojón, quien, en un arranque de sociales inexistentes en lo real pero posibles investigación, mi propósito era justamente desesperación quema sus campos de maíz. a nivel simbólico; son propuestas proféticas, replantearme no sólo una visión y una si se quiere, entendiendo lo profético en el representación sobre la naturaleza sino una Y en mi nuevo libro, The Limits of sentido de Richard Rorty, esto es, un manera de articular las visiones y las Liberalism, uno de los momentos cruciales universo de convicciones fluidas, representaciones específicamente culturales a del debate sobre estas filosofías ecológicas es herramienta de persuasión, imaginación, los proyectos de investigación y desarrollo la discusión sobre ‘culturas milenarias’ y poesía y valor. Lo profético significa que habían empezado desde los primeros ‘creencias’ que emprende Rigoberta Menchú predecir lo que todavía no es y por eso las conflictos globales que se suscitaron a partir y ante las cuales uno entra de lleno en esos nuevas ideas, aunque parezcan irrealizables, de la llegada de los españoles primero y diálogos postergados y conocimientos tienen que entrar a formar parte del debate después de los europeos al continente despreciados, como bien viene público y persuadir. Los movimientos americano. Propuse ahí que la idea moderna argumentando desde hace tiempo Walter liberadores son atractivos no precisamente de la naturaleza siempre significó un Mignolo. Y ¿no es acaso Menchú quien por sus exactitudes de diagnóstico sino por movimiento que se alejaba de la noción ‘de informa que los ambientalistas les han su imaginación, el valor de sus propuestas, y lo natural’ hacia significados económicos— robado sus ideas sin darles crédito? ¿No es el asumir que el espacio público es flexible. explotación, extracción, acumulación ella acaso la que pone en escena la exclusión Ideas opuestas al sentido común constituyen primaria de capital, desarrollo. Desde el indígena de los movimientos mundiales en el locus de lo profético, esto es, el lugar de principio de las confrontaciones euro- aras de la salvación del planeta? Hay

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segmentos de su texto, Rigoberta, la nieta de silencio cautivo de lo natural. El verdor cerramos este artículo. Para la perspicaz los Mayas, que son directamente útiles a la convertía de nuevo el proyecto de desarrollo analista cultural, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, la eco-crítica. Por ejemplo cuando habla de su en paisaje, en literatura, al desembocar en el hoja de coca no es droga, no es cocaína—los madre. El signo madre, en ella, significa gran lago, lago de tiburones de agua dulce, a indígenas de Arguedas y Alegría la mascan entidades biológicas y culturales, vehículo poca distancia del océano, casi sin cesar para descansar y calmarse. Para los que acarrea el sentido de la cultura estrangulando la cintura de América y testimonialistas y novelistas colombianos, milenaria. La madre de Rigoberta es convirtiéndola en pasaje natural—ahora como Alfredo Molano y Fernando Vallejos, partera, curandera, vidente. Conocía el xew’ totalmente poluto. Los niños de Nicaragua la cocaína envenena los cuerpos—de las xew que curaba dolores, los tiernos tallos de aprenden que su geografía es su historia y la mulas que las cargan en sus estómagos, de las hojas del chilacayote que curaban las historia natural, su historia social. los que la absorben por la nariz. La coca heridas de los pies causadas por el lodo, el corrompe gobiernos, transforma a los niños k’a q’ eyes que curaba los resfríos, el saq De la misma manera podríamos hablar, con en sicarios matones, traspasa fronteras y ixoqto para los dolores de estómago escritores, poetas, ensayistas y desarrollistas produce toneladas de documentación. causados por el hambre. La naturaleza era sobre las otras regiones de América. Por para ella un texto donde leía signos tales ejemplo, podríamos hablar con los Digamos, para terminar, que si la eco-crítica como la fortaleza de los vientos, el sonido de agrimensores y poetas Euclides de Cuna y está íntimamente asociada a los movimientos los animales, su presencia en lugares Wilson Harris sobre la inmensidad pasmosa ambientalistas en los países ricos, en inesperados, el movimiento del tiempo, la luz de la amazonía. Sitio archi-explorado, lugar América Latina está asociada a la y la oscuridad. Entendía el canto de los de tránsito de todo investigador, de todo colonización y a la modernización, a la pájaros, y por eso supo predecir la muerte de desarrollista. Libros como The Fate of the explotación y a la opresión. En América su hijo Patrocinio. Ella vivía en Chimel, Forest nos hablan de los desarrollos fallidos. Latina, los recursos naturales, sean tierra, lugar mágico, encantado, tierra rica en toda Y toda la literatura de fronteras termina en paisaje, cultivo, o explotación y opresión variedad de árboles, pájaros, flores, un sus orillas, José Eustacio Rivera y Rómulo han sido tropo fundamental de lo cultural bosque de nubes, los pulmones del planeta. Gallegos en Venezuela, Vargas Llosa en el pero su énfasis no ha recaído en la Cuando leo a Rigoberta, pongo en Perú, Wilson Harris en Guyana. La selva es protección de la naturaleza solamente sino perspectiva las habilidades del rastreador en un gran tropo literario, desarrollista y también y muy particularmente en la Sarmiento, que siempre me fascinó con su medioambientalista. En sus bordes termina protección de lo humano. magia detectivesca que ahora encuentro la sabana, la civilización, y empieza lo estaba relacionada a la lectura de lo natural, desconocido, primero y último día de la al rastro dejado en los caminos, de ahí su creación según el novelista cubano Alejo Referencias nombre de rastreador. Ya no digamos el Carpentier, punto de cambio y lugar de relato de Don Segundo Sombra, límite de las ambiciones de la familia Escobar, Arturo conocimiento de lo natural en el momento Rockefeller. 1995 Encountering Development: The Making de su desvanecimiento en lo lírico al ser and Unmaking of the Third World. absorbido por lo industrial. Y así podríamos hablar no sólo de lo que se Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ve y se mide sino de lo que se come, el El trabajo de naturalistas y geógrafos que banano, la fruta más limpia puesto que la González Echevarría, Roberto recorren a pie las llanuras con sus envuelve su propia cáscara, el azúcar, para 1990 Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin instrumentos de medir inmensidades, de Sidney Mintz, la gran contribución de American Narrative. Cambridge; New contar, de almacenar, de clasificar, de América a Europa—energía para York: Cambridge University Press interceptar y tratar de domeñar lo natural trabajadores y soldados. Para ya no hablar encanta. La lectura de Rápido Tránsito de de la coca, la hoja milagrosa, que cura, José Coronel Urtecho nos pone al tanto de calma, embriaga, enloquece, produce gran todos estos viajeros que recorrían el río San acumulación de capital y grandes cambios en Juan en busca de la manera más expedita de la articulación de los grupos de poder. Con atravesar el continente lado a lado y cómo, ella rigiendo al centro de las narrativas de en su travesía, se iban maravillando ante el acumulación de capital y criminalidad hoy,

32 Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia Molano, Alfredo ¿Existe un giro neoconservador en n.d. “Una mercancía indígena y sus paradojas: 2004 Loyal Soldiers in the Cocaine Kingdom: Latinoamérica hoy? La hoja de coca en tiempos de Tales of Drugs, Mules, and Gunmen. globalización” James Graham (tr). New York: Columbia por JOHN BEVERLEY ; [email protected] “Celebración de la hoja de coca” Menchú, Rigoberta . Madrid: El País-Aguilar. político. Conjuntamente de la necesidad de un cambio de paradigma que pone Hecht, Susana and Alexander Cockburn Mignolo, Walter nuevamente el énfasis en el estado en vez de 1989 The Fate of the Forest: Developers, 2000 Local Histories, Global Designs: la sociedad civil y los movimientos sociales. Destroyers, and Defenders of the Coloniality, Subaltern Kowledges, and Esto es en parte porque, en casos como Amazon. London: New York, N.Y.: Border Thinking. Princeton, N.J.: Bolivia o Venezuela, los movimientos Verso. Princeton UP, 2000. sociales se han vuelto el estado (para pedir Gerbi, Antonello prestada una frase de Ernesto Laclau), o se Urtecho, José Coronel están prestando activamente a proyectos c.1985Nature in the New World: From 1972 Rápido Tránsito. San José, Costa Rica: políticos para ganar el poder de estado. Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, Pero este retorno de lo político también trae Fernández de Oviedo. Jeremy Moyle (tr). EDUCA. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh en su secuela una serie de nuevas preguntas e incertidumbres. En particular, quiero sugerir Press Mintz, Sidney Wilfred 1973 The Dispute of the New World: The aquí que en la actualidad se está 1985 Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar produciendo un giro neoconservador en el History of a Polemic, 1750-1900. in Modern History. New York, N.Y.: pensamiento socio-cultural latinoamericano Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Viking. que busca intervenir en esta nueva Foucault, Michel coyuntura. Este giro es doblemente 1970 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of paradójico: primero, porque ocurre en el the Human Sciences. New York: contexto del resurgimiento de la izquierda Pantheon Books. latinoamericana en los últimos años; segundo, porque se manifiesta Rodríguez, Ileana principalmente desde la izquierda. 2004 Transatlantic Topographies: Islands, Highlands, Jungle. Minneapolis: La idea de un giro neoconservador, y el University of Minnesota Press. concepto en si, se refieren a historia 2009 Liberalism at its Limits: Crime and Terror conocida en los Estados Unidos que lleva a in the Latin American Cultural Text. un grupo de intelectuales desde la izquierda Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. eventualmente a una posición de apoyo para Reagan y sus seguidores en el partido Rorty, Richard Republicano. Ser “neo”conservador 1998 Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers. entonces implica que no eran conservadores Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, inicialmente—eran liberales, social 1998. demócratas, trotskistas, aun en algunos casos estalinistas. Son “nuevos” Vallejo, Fernando conservadores como los “nuevos cristianos” 1999 La Virgen de los Sicarios. México: del siglo XVI en España, sin el elemento de Alfaguara, 1999. coerción.

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El giro neoconservador en Estados Unidos lo tanto un fuerte desafío a la autoridad de Latinoamérica. Surge precisamente en el aparece inicialmente sobre todo como una las élites intelectuales tradicionales para momento en que el neoliberalismo ha crítica generalizada de la Nueva Izquierda y determinar los estándares de valor cultural. perdido su hegemonía como ideología. la contra-cultura de los sesenta, y de las nuevas formas de “identity politics” como el Por contraste, los neoconservadores sí creen Se pueden vislumbrar elementos de una feminismo o los movimientos de afirmación que hay una jerarquía de valores posición neoconservadora en, por ejemplo, étnica. Similarmente, implícita en el giro epistemológicos, estéticos y morales imbuida las posiciones actuales de Beatriz Sarlo, uno neoconservador latinoamericano hay una en la formas de la alta cultura y las de los intelectuales públicos más importantes variante de la distinción ya bastante disciplinas académicas—una jerarquía de Argentina. He hecho referencia antes a difundida entre izquierda respetable e vinculada esencialmente al paradigma de la Jorge Castañeda. También podría sugerir izquierda “retrograda”, para usar la Ilustración. Piensan que es importante los casos de Sergio Ramírez en Nicaragua, caracterización de Jorge Castañeda defender e impartir esos valores pedagógica Elizabeth Burgos y Teodoro Petkoff en (“Morning in Latin America,” Foreign y críticamente contra la fuerza Venezuela, o (en ciertas formulaciones) Affairs, September/October 2008). En Chile desterritorializadora de la sociedad de Héctor Aguilar Camín en México. (El o Brasil, la izquierda respetable está en el mercado y la globalización. Este papel modelo del intelectual neoconservador en poder. Pero en Argentina, Bolivia, o requiere de la autoridad del intelectual América Latina de otra generación es Venezuela la izquierda “respetable” forma a tradicional, en el sentido que Gramsci le da Octavio Paz). Pero no hay espacio aquí veces parte de la oposición política a los al concepto—es decir, el intelectual que para considerar casos particulares. Y, por gobiernos de la izquierda “retrograda” en el habla en nombre de lo universal y que opera supuesto, existen variantes de lo que poder. en la universidad y el mundo del arte y la denomino aquí el giro neoconservador en cultura, y en el debate de las ideas en la cada país de América Latina. Generalmente, La pregunta subyacente es por lo tanto sobre esfera pública. esas variantes expresan una especie de la naturaleza de lo que se ha entendido pliegue o escisión dentro del campo convencionalmente como “izquierda”. En Con afán ilustrativo podríamos decir en un intelectual de la izquierda. Consciente del otras palabras, la “izquierda” intelectual contexto latinoamericano que los Vargas peligro de generalizar demasiado, porque es tradicional en América Latina hoy, o una Llosa (padre e hijo) o los así llamados evidente que hay marcadas diferencias de parte significativa de ella, ¿sigue siendo de escritores “McOndo” o Manifiesto Crack, o situación y posiciones involucradas, me izquierda? ¿O se está volviendo como en el la tendencia en los estudios culturales que atrevo a sugerir seis temas entrecruzados que caso norteamericano una especie nueva pone primordialmente el énfasis en las caracterizan el giro neoconservador: derecha? operaciones del mercado de bienes culturales, o la mencionada celebración de la 1) Un rechazo generalizado a la autoridad— Para comenzar una respuesta, sería útil hacer “sociedad civil” en sectores de las ciencias la “razón subjetiva”, según la fórmula de una distinción entre neoconservadurismo y sociales (incluyendo a veces los estudios Sarlo—de una “voz” y experiencia neoliberalismo, una distinción banal pero subalternos), constituyen una aceptación, subalterna o popular. Relacionado con quizás necesaria, ya que estas posiciones a implícita o explícita, de una posición esto, un escepticismo frente no sólo a las menudo se desdibujan entre si. Los neoliberal. Pero esas tendencias—y otras políticas identitarias multiculturales sino neoliberales creen en la eficacia del mercado que se relacionan con ellas—son algo también ante las nuevas formas y sujetos libre y en un modelo utilitario de agencia diferente del giro neoconservador. En cierto de protagonismo popular informal, como humana, basado en la maximización de la sentido el giro neoconservador está dirigido las turbas chavistas, o los cocaleros de ganancia y la minimización de la pérdida. contra estas tendencias de la teoría social y Evo Morales, o los piqueteros, o los Como se sabe, el neoliberalismo en principio cultural, que tendían a dominar la escena en comuneros mapuches en Chile. La idea no propone otra jerarquía de valor a más el período anterior. Usando una conocida subyacente es que los nuevos gobiernos que el deseo del consumidor en si y la distinción de Raymond Williams, podríamos neo-populistas de la izquierda efectividad del mercado libre y la democracia decir que el neoliberalismo es la tendencia “retrograda” movilizan esta “razón formal como mecanismos para ejercitar la residual y que el neoconservadurismo es, o subjetiva” de una forma demagógica y libertad de elección. Esta desjerarquización está tratando de ser, la tendencia emergente aventurista. implícita en la teoría neoliberal entraña por en el pensamiento socio-cultural en

34 2) Una defensa del académico, el artista enfrentamiento de intelectuales y artistas superior (y a la educación en general), y la profesional, o el escritor-crítico y de sus tradicionales e intelectuales orgánicos de proliferación de la cultura de masas procedimientos metodológicos y su los movimientos sociales. comercializada. Por otro lado, surge del función cívica-pedagógica. Involucrado debilitamiento de la hegemonía ideológica en esta defensa hay el auto- 5) Un rechazo general del proyecto de la del neoliberalismo. La “marea”, al igual que reconocimiento de una generación de izquierda latinoamericana de los años 60 la elección de Obama en Estados Unidos, intelectuales y profesionales de izquierda y 70, y en especial (pero no sólo) de la muestran que cada vez más la ideología que asumieron riesgos considerables lucha armada, a favor de una posición neoliberal es percibida por todos lados como durante tiempos difíciles en sus política más cautelosa, con la advertencia insuficiente para garantizar la respectivos países, pero que ahora están de que una equivocación “voluntarista” gobernabilidad. Las consecuencias de las en proceso de ser desplazados por nuevas similar acecha en el corazón de las nuevas políticas económicas neoliberales produjeron fuerzas políticas y actores más jóvenes. políticas identitarias y nacionalistas de los una crisis de legitimación tanto del estado En lugar de identificarse con estos nuevos gobiernos neo-populistas. Este rechazo como de los aparatos ideológicos, actores, que muchas veces no provienen conlleva un paradigma implícito de incluyendo la escuela, los museos, la familia, de la clase intelectual (o, como en el caso desilusión personal, similar al modelo las instituciones religiosas, el mundo del arte de Álvaro García Liñera en Bolivia o autobiográfico de la picaresca barroca, en y la cultura, y el sistema tradicional de Marcos en México, se salen de esa clase), que se asocia la juventud con las ilusiones partidos políticos. La tendencia libertaria el giro neoconservador los ve sin del período revolucionario de los 60 y 70, implícita en el modelo de “elección racional” simpatía, como si les faltara legitimidad, y la madurez con una posición más a través del mercado no puede servir como o como si de algún modo fueran desengañada y sensata. plataforma para la imposición de una demasiado ingenuos. estructura normativa de valores y 6) Una reterritorialización y defensa de las expectativas sobre poblaciones. La 3) A pesar del rechazo explícito o implícito disciplinas académicas, contra los combinación de privatización y proliferación de las políticas identitarias, se reafirma disturbios de lo que Néstor García de cultura de masas desestabilizó la paradójicamente una posicionalidad Canclini solía llamar en el heyday de los autoridad cultural de un sistema previo de “criolla” latinoamericana contrapuesta a estudios culturales “ciencias sociales normas, valores, y jerarquías representado lo que es percibido como el carácter nómadas”. En el caso de la literatura en por los intelectuales. Al mismo tiempo, la “anglo” de las nuevas modalidades de la particular, esto involucra una afirmación fuerza innovadora de las medidas teoría postmoderna. Este énfasis en “lo del llamado “valor estético” y del canon, económicas neoliberales empieza a descrecer nuestro” o lo “local” hace del giro un canon moderno-vanguardista, pero y/o producir efectos perversos. En esta neoconservador una variante del también normativo, disciplinador, nueva coyuntura, el giro neoconservador se Arielismo: el supuesto de que los valores jerarquizador. En este sentido, aunque es ofrece como una ideología de y la identidad cultural de Latinoamérica sobre todo un fenómeno de la esfera profesionalismo y disciplinaridad centrada están vinculados de una manera pública latinoamericana, el giro en la esfera de las humanidades, que fueron especialmente significativa a su expresión neoconservador atraviesa también el especialmente desprestigiadas y perjudicadas literaria y artística. campo académico de los Latin American por las reformas neoliberales en la Studies. educación, una ideología implementada por 4) Una resistencia notable a reconocer las y a través del estado y los aparatos demandas de autonomía y las nuevas ¿De donde surge el impulso detrás del giro ideológicos para contrarrestar la crisis de formas de agencia desarrolladas por los neoconservador? Creo que representa un legitimidad provocada por el neoliberalismo. movimientos identitarios indígenas o efecto superestructural de la integración de afro-latinos, o de las mujeres y las Latinoamérica a los procesos actuales de Si este hipótesis es correcta, el giro minorías sexuales—movimientos que de globalización. Registra por un lado la crisis neoconservador puede ser visto como un una forma u otra involucran aspectos de de sectores de las clases media y alta intento por parte de una intelectualidad lo que Aníbal Quijano ha llamado la afectadas de manera negativa por las criolla, progresista, profesionalizada, en su “colonialidad del poder” en América políticas neoliberales de ajuste estructural, la mayoría blanca o blanca-mestiza, de clase Latina. Se trata en cierto sentido de un reducción del apoyo estatal a la educación media o clase media-alta, de capturar, o

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recapturar, el espacio de autoridad cultural y políticamente con posiciones más Notes Toward an Aesthetics of Marginality hermenéutica en Latinoamérica de, por un explícitamente conservadoras o de centro in Contemporary Latin American Literature lado, el neoliberalismo, y, por otro, de las derecha, como sucedió en los casos de los nuevas formas heterogéneas de gestión New York Intellectuals en los Estados by LUZ HORNE política de los movimientos sociales, Unidos (muchos de los cuales terminaron en Cornell University representado sobre todo por los nuevos el Partido Republicano de Reagan) o los [email protected] gobiernos de la “marea populista”. llamados Nuevos Filósofos o el historiador Despliega para ese fin una doble estrategia Francois Furet en Francia. Los ejemplos de and DANIEL NOEMI VOIONMAA University of Michigan de interpelación: hace un llamado a crear Jorge Castañeda en México o Elizabeth [email protected] una nueva forma de hegemonía cultural, Burgos en Venezuela hacen alusión a esta entendida en el sentido de lo que Gramsci posible consecuencia en un contexto actual In the first pages of Berkeley em Bellagio llama “el liderazgo moral intelectual de la latinoamericano. (2002), by Brazilian writer João Gilberto nación”, que incorpore sus propios criterios Noll, the narrator—an invited writer at disciplinarios de autoridad, profesionalismo El giro neoconservador de los 70 y 80 en los Berkeley University very similar to the actual y especialización; al mismo tiempo, hace un Estados Unidos comienza en el campo de la author—reflects about the contradictions of intento de redefinir (o limitar) los proyectos crítica cultural, pero pasa rápidamente a la studying third world misery from the emergentes de la izquierda latinoamericana órbita de la política. Esa crítica dividió comfortable position that the first world dentro de lo que continúan siendo tanto a la izquierda como al Partido provides: parámetros dominados por esos criterios. Demócrata, muchas veces sobre líneas raciales y generacionales, inhibiendo así la eu me preguntava quem estava ali de Se podría argumentar que la operación gran promesa de los sesenta en los Estados fato interessado por esses quadros de crítica y política representada por figuras Unidos: la formación de un nuevo bloque miséria afastados de seus cotidianos como Beatriz Sarlo es algo completamente histórico popular-democrático pluri-racial y quase principescos. O que fariam com distinto del tipo de neoconservadurismo potencialmente mayoritario en el corazón de essas imagens que para eles deveriam propugnado en las “guerras culturales” en la sociedad norteamericana. En este sentido reverberar como campos de refugiados los Estados Unidos. Más bien, se podría allanó el camino para la restauración de todo o azar do planeta? –azar que decir de esa operación, o dice de sí misma, conservadora de los 80, un período de eles nunca iriam constatar fora de suas que no sólo viene desde la izquierda, sino “larga duración”, como dicen los embaixadas, de seus hotéis de segurança que es también en cierto sentido una defensa historiadores económicos, del cual solo eletrônica ou desarmados de suas de la izquierda contra lo que se percibe comenzamos a salir con Obama. Si mi fantasias de ajuda às populações de como un relativismo postmodernista diagnóstico de un giro neoconservador en onde eu viera (para lhes ensinar em cómplice con el neoliberalismo y un Latinoamérica es correcto, y enfatizo su vão) (18, our emphasis). neopopulismo demagógico post-neoliberal. carácter tentativo, mi temor es que actúe Sin embargo, si bien mi propia posición no también como inhibidor o límite a los In spite of the narrator’s cynicism about his es completamente desinteresada, no creo objetivos y posibilidades de la izquierda y el students’ interest and about the impossibility estar exagerando el caso. Estoy tratando de pensamiento progresista latinoamericano en for them to establish a direct contact with captar una tendencia emergente que todavía el período venidero. third world poverty, following this quote the no ha tomado total conciencia de sí misma y narrator clarifies that his own position is not que, como tal, podría desplazarse en better: his images of misery don’t come from distintas direcciones. Creo que el giro “reality” either, but mainly from cinema. neoconservador continuará siendo una He is also distanced from the “reality” he is tendencia dentro de la izquierda y la supposed to talk about and explain. Thus, intelectualidad progresista en América through this reflection, one of the main Latina, y en el campo de los Latin American problems involved in the representation of Studies. Pero también es posible que si, en marginality comes to light: the problem of contextos concretos, la situación política se mediation. This is a problem with several polariza más, esta tendencia se alinee

36 sides. On one hand, it relates to the subject reinforced. A few decades later, as we can excellent example of this and of all the and his/her class position: to talk about the see through many of the naturalist novels contradictions that Social Realism entails. marginal from a certain economic and social written during the turn of the century, even well being may derive in or create exoticism, though this aesthetic broadens the artistic However, Social Realism was rapidly paternalism or a didactical perspective (the field and directs the reader’s gaze towards dismissed as second rate literature. Other one who feels entitled to teach the other). the marginal aspects of society (Cambaceres’ more “elaborated” literary forms took stage. On the other, mediation appears novels or D’Halmar’s Juana Lucero [1902] Vidas Secas (Barren Lives) (1938) by unavoidably in cultural representation: in are interesting examples), it tends to Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos and El film or in literature, as in art and politics, reproduce the exclusion through a llano en llamas (1953) by Mexican Juan representation—the attempt of ‘bringing representational system of classification and Rulfo are part of this change. Even though back’ something that is not there—implies a normalization. Then, in the first decades of these texts have elements from Social distance from/to the subject or object being the past century, we witness the emergence Realism, the straightforward political represented. This distance—and mediation of a literature that tries to engage with Latin rhetoric that characterized this aesthetics can be understood as the effort to traverse American reality, and particular, its nature, disappears. Also, the new urban reality of that trajectory—will always remain. No su tierra, in a different way. the continent was one of the main problems matter what we do we will always require that affected the representation of mediation if there is anything we want to re- Mundonovismo, as it name implies, creates a marginality at this time. Migration from the present. vision of Latin America as something new countryside had created a new reality of and different (to/from Europe). In some of poverty and marginality. An urban Critical In fact, as we know, the problems involved Horacio Quiroga’s short stories, in La Realism tries to acknowledge and represent in the representation of marginality are vorágine (1924) by Colombian writer José this new situation and the system that multiple and have always been a matter of Eustasio Rivera or in Doña Bárbara (1929) produces it, but always keeping in mind that controversy. However, the old question, by Venezuela’s future president Rómulo what is being written is literature. implicit in Noll’s novel: “How must Gallegos, marginality acquires the meaning professors, researchers, writers or artists in of brutality, anti-civilization, and madness. So, as it aims also to artistically express the general, ‘depict’ the reality of social Nature, which symbolizes everything outside structural causes of social injustice, the marginality?” is still pertinent and relevant ordem e progreso, must be tamed. But that representation of marginality becomes more today. In order to understand some of the perspective was not enough for many young and more complex. The position, the locus main forms and versions this question takes writers and intellectuals who saw in the of enunciation, from where the writer in Latin American literature today, we need events of 1917 a real possibility of change, “speaks,” becomes a key issue for which we to make a brief (and necessarily partial) and believed that literature had a more find different kinds of answers. Magical review of the ways in which the answers (as concrete (social and political) function in Realism seems to constitute an escape from well as the questions themselves) have society. So, the late 1920s and 1930s see the this: it produces an allegory of marginality changed through time. appearance of the most significant that appears to exclude the voice of the movement, until then, that attempts to marginal. On the other side of the spectrum, *** represent the reality of the marginal. Social A hora da estrela (1977), by Brazilian writer Realism, with its shocking language and Clarice Lispector, makes the problem of how During the second half of the 19th century, sometimes pedagogical plots and to speak on behalf of the other the central the narrative that prevailed had a romantic- monotonous rhetoric, brings marginal aspect of the novel. During the 1970s and realist approach. The marginal characters, characters into the ‘center’ of literary 80s, Testimonio constitutes a serious—and i.e. belonging to lower social classes but creation. They are now the protagonists; controversial—attempt to end with the rarely to its very extremes, tend to be they use their own expressions and are far privileged position of the writer. In fact, comical and dumb; they speak ‘funny’ and from being turned into comical figures. The mediation persists as an unresolved problem. are tricksters without being evil, as we can collection of short stories, Los que se van, see in Martín Rivas (1863). Hardly is the published in 1930 by the Ecuadorian writers Certainly, the marginal can be understood in social structure put into question; on the Joaquín Gallegos Lara, Demetrio Aguilera different ways and perspectives. Racial, contrary, most of the time it is reproduced or Malta and Enrique Gil Gilbert, is an gender and economic inequalities produce

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different definitions of the marginal and verisimilar worlds in the representation of De Castro Rocha, in his study of Brazilian different ways of thinking about it. marginality. Reified human relations, lack of contemporary culture, provides us with a Nevertheless, given that Latin America is the solidarity, and an increasing feeling of general view of our problematic. He argues most unequal region of the world in terms of loneliness appear to be recurrent topics that that there has been a shift from a “dialectic income, when thinking about “marginality,” result from the new conditions imposed, of malandroism” towards a “dialectic of the economic factor continues to be the most mainly, by neoliberalism’s laws. Closely marginality which is mainly based in the important and determinant one and this is related to this, there is a type of literature overcoming of social inequalities through certainly reflected in the themes addressed by that could be said to take a documentary confrontation instead of reconciliation, and literature. (See Centeno and Hoffman 2003.) form. As we can see in Paulo Lins’s Cidade through the exposition of violence instead of de Deus, Luiz Ruffato’s Eles eram muitos its concealment” (2). Now it is not about Therefore, in order to understand the literary cavalos, Rafael Courtoisie’s Tajos and neglecting differences, but rather bringing representation of marginality in the present, several of the Colombian sicario’s novels— them “to the fore, refusing the uncertain we must link it to the social and economic just to name a few examples—the lines promise of social reconciliation” (15). conditions where that marginality is demarcating fiction and reality, and literature Violence, he emphasizes several times, is at happening. In the case of today’s literature, and document, are distorted or, on occasion, the core of what is a “new form of the crucial moment in which the theme of almost fully erased. This, of course, has relationship between social classes” (15) and, social marginality seems to reemerge as a certain consequences and problems. For the ways in which it is approached and its recurrent topic is related to the establishment instance, the reception (and the selling and representation, determines the “symbolic of neoliberalism in Latin America in the late buying) of these fictions as if they were [and aesthetic] battle” (16), that the new 1980s and 1990s. In this sense, the question depicting the “real” Latin America, the productions are fighting. “How does literature represents marginality “only” reality, thus creating a turmoil of today?” could be rephrased as “How do new stereotypes and reinforcing older ones. Violence, in many cases, does not come from literature and neoliberalism dialogue?” Remarkably, this phenomenon repeats what ominous totalitarian states (hence a happened before with Magical Realism, difference from testimonio or the literature So, in the midst of this complex and plural although now the reality depicted is far from de denuncia from the 70s or 80s). Now that scenery, we would like to propose a series of magical. the state is (supposedly) almost invisible, or characteristics, problems or themes that we has been transformed into a system that, like believe are frequent in the current literature god, is everywhere but nowhere to be seen; and in its treating of marginality. Obviously, II. Marginality and Violence now, under these circumstances, state we have no pretension of being exhaustive. violence is not only reproduced through its This is just a (very) preliminary attempt to One of the main marks of the current presence but also, and perhaps more so, understand how marginality manifests itself literature dealing with the representation of through its absence and abandonment in the representation of situations, spaces, marginality is the exacerbation of violence. towards its subjects.1 The marginalized, the and subjects, and to propose a set of A type of violence that is also, as it occurs “refugees,” as Noll calls them, the people questions that we believe are crucial to think with the situations mentioned above, “without a state” have become what they this topic today. described with a very incisive and graphic are not only for the lack of citizenship (as language. We are confronted with violence Arendt used to think) but mostly because the of all kinds—violence that produces state does not get to them (they are left out, I. Realism and the Marginal marginality, violence that is produced by they become leftovers). The “Market,” of marginality: we face a never ending vicious course, terrible and appealing, becomes the Clearly, one of the privileged concepts used cycle of violence. Yes, violence has become a expression of this non visible force. The to refer to the various attempts of trademark of Latin American literature. market, unbeatable and autotelic since it representing marginality has been realism. Instead of women flying to the skies (tries to) explains itself, is the “cause” of Although not exclusively, the last decades wrapped up in white sheets, they are now inequality and marginality and the source of offer us a plethora of texts that choose a being raped and gunned down. the violence that is fought with more clear, incisive, objective, and legible prose violence. Literature—not only the texts but and a preoccupation for the creation of

38 also itself as an institution—has entered a by Jorge Franco; La virgen de los sicarios exclusion from law that creates a new set of new phase in its relation to the market. (Our Lady of the Assassins) by Fernando rules and even a particular Law (as it is the Vallejo; Satanás by Mario Mendoza (not a case in César Aira’s La villa or in Eltit’s In fact, it is very interesting to notice that sicario’s novel but one that has violence at its Mano de obra); there is also a spatial most of the criticism that a work like core); or, again, Cidade de Deus (City of exclusion that allows the establishment of a McOndo2 received, remarked the absence of God), by Paulo Lins. The problems that different space (topos) for marginality marginality (the short stories depict a middle arise from this “success” are various and not (Rodolfo Fogwill’s Vivir Afuera or Nona or upper middle class way of living). This to a lesser extent determine the ways in Fernández’s Av. Diez de Julio Huamachuco can be read, at least, from two perspectives: which marginality is conceived. could be thought as reflections about the dangerous insistence that the “marginal” Simultaneously, the role of literature, and marginality’s space), and a different time in belongs to Latin American culture and our role as critics, is at stake. The problem which marginality occurs that is the base for therefore must be present in every cultural is not one-sided. On one hand, marginality a different time (chronos) to address the production (to some extent this recalls the has become a commodity, but as such it marginal (Sergio Chejfec’s Boca de lobo controversy between the Florida and Boedo sparks discomfort, especially among the constitutes a remarkable example). groups in the 1920s). But another reading is most progressive sectors. On another, it has possible. Without suggesting that all also turned into an intellectual and literature has to address the issue of theoretical token, scorned by many who see V. Marginal Subjects and Bodies marginality, the absence of it and the in that the repetition of what is being insistence in the social class of the criticized (the commodification of The excluded and marginal subject is protagonists (as said, middle or upper marginality). Following the steps Clarice repeatedly represented as a fragmented and middle) can be interpreted as another way in Lispector took in A hora da estrela, some of corroded body. There is almost always a which it—marginality—is present. In fact, today’s literature decides to include this connection to monstrosity (teratology, as invisibility constitutes a powerful way of problem within itself and express its seen in Fetiche y fantoche by Ecuadorian exerting and showing violence. contradictory position. writer Huilo Ruales); and sickness and madness (Diamela Eltit and Paz Errázuriz’s El infarto del alma). The marginal subject is III. Marginality as Spectacle IV. The New World of Marginality therefore presented as completely desubjectivized; s/he has lost all humanity Parallel to this absence of the marginal, we As we can appreciate in the literary except for his/her (fragmented and/or have what seems to be the opposite: the production that engages with marginality, mutilated) body. There is a process of overly explicit, almost naturalistic the exclusion that characterizes it—which assimilation between this “destroyed” description of marginal people and their should be understood in dialectical terms subject and the abject surroundings. So it lives. However, in contrast with classic since exclusion implies a way of belonging as occurs in Onde andará Dulce Veiga (1991), naturalism, now, in this new aesthetics of well—contributes to the formation of a by Caio Fernando Abreu, in El aire (1992), the marginal, we ought to consider particular world. In fact, it would be by Sergio Chejfec or in Los años inútiles spectacularization. In general terms we can possible to talk about the creation of a new (2002), by Peruvian writer Jorge Benavides. affirm that Latin America has become a world, a world of marginality with its own In these texts, the subjects and the spaces of stage for the spectacle of violence. Violence, rules and characteristics; one that provides a misery get confused: the subjects become poverty, marginality at large, becomes a distinctive Weltanschauung. trash, rubbish, literal and literary leftovers. commodity to be written about, and, However, this confusion doesn’t occur only naturally, to be sold. Recent Colombian There is an exclusion from the symbolic between subjects and spaces. In its literature is perhaps the foremost example realm that generates a new kind of language recurrence, the “garbage scenes” show the of it: the literature of the sicario, the epitome and a new logic to talk about marginality (as similarity of marginality and its traces in of violence and marginality, has had a seen in many of César Aira’s novels, or in different parts of the world. tremendous commercial success, and the works of João Gilberto Noll, Sergio expands much beyond the mere literary Chejfec, Diamela Eltit, Nona Fernández, or As mentioned, Noll uses the term “refugee” realm. Let us just mention Rosario Tijeras, Caio Fernando Abreu). There is an to refer to the marginal. This becomes

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highly significant if we think about the been transformed into leftovers and rubbish, References delocalization that, notwithstanding their instead of provoking a feeling of guilt and/or referentiality, these narratives seem to project condescendence, would show how the Abreu, Caio Fernando. Onde andará Dulce when dealing with marginality. In fact, individual (considered only as a living body) Veiga. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, although in several occasions the texts do becomes an object of power, becomes what 1990. refer to concrete spaces or historical Foucault calls “docile bodies.” Therefore, it Aira, César. La villa. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2001. moments which allows us to establish with is about trying to maintain the power precision the when and where of the existing in the marginal: to recuperate Benavides, Jorge. Los años inútiles. Madrid: narration, the repetition of the topics, marginality’s rebelliousness. Thus, getting Alfaguara, 2002. problems and situations presented make us rid of condescendence, we would be capable think that there is no great difference of showing dehumanization in a way that Blest Gana, Alberto. Martín Rivas. Caracas: between what happens in a Favela in Rio or gives humanism back its political Ayacucho, 1977. in a Comuna in Medellín, or to the subjects dimension—a humanism that is not longer who live there. As Silviano Santiago exotic, picturesque, or charitable. Centeno, Miguel Ángel and Hoffman Kelly. suggests in O Cosmopolitanismo do pobre, 2003. “The Lopsided Continent. Inequality in Latin America.” Annual Review of Sociology. marginality acquires a singular and quite Marginality and its representative attempt 29: 363-390. frightening cosmopolitanism. In Retrato de allow us, precisely, to imagine a new politics: una infancia havanaviejera, Zoe Valdés’s a politics of openness and inclusion where Chejfec, Sergio. Boca de lobo. Buenos Aires: young narrator connects the Brazilian there are no prophecies to be fulfilled or Alfaguara, 2000. favelas, the shantytowns in Caracas, and the sentences to be carried out. Thinking about poor neighborhoods in Havana, creating a marginality and its representation emerges —-. El aire. Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2008. Latin American map of marginality and a today as an alternative to think a different transnational dialogue. (This mirrors and future. Courtoisie, Rafael. Tajos. Montevideo: mimics a not so imaginary map of richness Alfaguara, 1999. and the transnational circulation of capital.) de Castro Rocha, João Cezar. “The ‘dialectic of Marginality crosses borders and becomes a Endnotes marginality’: preliminary notes on Brazilian new marker in our global times. The 1 contemporary culture.” Centre for Brazilian marginalized subject is the subject that The presence of the state, its participation and relevance, has never been actually completely Studies, University of Oxford, Working Paper migrates in order to follow the flow of erased. In other words, its invisibility or plain 62: http://www.brazil.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/ capital: the marginalized subject becomes the disappearance is a neoliberal ideal that has not pdf_file/0008/9359/Joao20Cezar20Castro20R new nomad. occurred. Given the current circumstances of ocha2062.pdf. the world crisis, and specially if we see the cases of the governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, D’Halmar, Augusto. Juana Lucero. Santiago: Final Remarks and Ecuador—where the state participation Nascimento, 1969. has increased in the last years—this notion of Eltit, Diamela. Mano de obra. Santiago: Planeta, At its best, one of the fundamental aspects an invisible state is, certainly, more than 2002. in the literary representation of the marginal dubious. is its ability to suspend and defer some 2 An anthology of short stories by “young —- and Errázuriz, Paz. El infarto del alma. 2ed. conventions that the reader is expecting to writers,” published in Spain in 1996, and Santiago: F. Zegers, 1999. find. There may be a dislocation of the edited by the Chileans Alberto Fuguet and perspective, a viewing from an unexpected Sergio Gómez. Fernández, Nona. Av. Diez de julio standing point: the reader, then, will be Huamachuco. Santiago: Uqbar, 2007. able to ‘discover’ what has always been already there. Fogwill, Rodolfo. Vivir Afuera. Buenos Aries: Sudamericana, 1998. We should expect—if we dare to ask—that Franco, Jorge. Rosario Tijeras. Barcelona: the exhibition of individual bodies that have Norma, 1999.

40 ON LASA2009

Report from the Program Chairs

by EVELYNE HUBER | University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill | [email protected]

and CYNTHIA STEELE | University of Washington-Seattle | [email protected]

Fuguet, Alberto and Gómez, Sergio. Eds. In the months since our last report, LASA Latin American Cinema; and on Literature McOndo. Barcelona: Mondadori, 1996. sent out acceptance notices to some 7,000 and the Left Turn in Latin America. After individuals. Many of the proposals much negotiating, the receptions will be held Gallegos, Rómulo. Doña Bárbara. Caracas: consisted of entire panels, but many at the university after the last panels of the Ayacucho, 1977. proposals were for individual papers. The day in order to make it as easy as possible individual paper proposals were handled in a for Congress participants to join them. Gallegos Lara, Joaquín, et al. Los que se van. Quito: El Conejo, 1985. two-stage process: The track chairs made decisions about acceptance and grouped the The Preliminary Program is on line at the LASA Lins, Paulo. Cidade de Deus. São Paulo: papers into panels with the greatest possible website . Companhia das Letras, 1997. thematic coherence. Proposals that were Preregistration is required for all accepted but could not be placed in this way participants. Names of participants who fail Lispector, Clarece. A hora da estrela. Rio de were forwarded to us, with the charge to to preregister will not appear in the Program Janeiro: Nova Frontiera, 1984. look across tracks to combine paper book. Thus, this is a preliminary program proposals into panels or accommodate them in the true sense of the word. It happens Mendoza, Mario. Satanás. Barcelona: Seix in already existing panels. In order to before every Congress that some accepted Barral, 2002. accommodate as many proposals as possible, participants fail to preregister and Noll, João Gilberto. Berkeley em Bellagio. Rio we had to make frequent use of established consequently some sessions are left with only de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2002. LASA practice and ask many panel chairs to a couple of papers. In those cases, we shall accept additional papers to their panels. The do our best to find panels for these Ramos, Graciliano. Vidas Secas. Lisboa: great majority of panel chairs graciously remaining papers where they can be Caminho, 1991. granted these requests, and we trust that presented to an interested audience and these new papers will make excellent panels stimulate dialogue with the other scholars Rivera, José Eustasio. La vorágine. Madrid: even better by offering additional on those panels. Cátedra, 1990. perspectives. The hotel information is available at the Ruales, Huilo. Fetiche y fantoche. Quito: The LASA Secretariat added Melissa LASA website as well. We would encourage Universidad Católica, 1994. Raslevich to its staff in order to deal with all participants to make their hotel Ruffato, Luiz. Eles eram muitos cavalos. São the extraordinary workload generated by the reservations soon, to ensure that you get Paulo: Boitempo, 2001. Congress. Despite great efforts of the highly space in the hotel of your choice. All U.S. efficient and committed staff, response time participants also need to keep in mind that Rulfo, Juan. El llano en llamas. Madrid: to emails sometimes remained longer than Brazil has visa requirements, so it would be Cátedra, 1985. potential Congress participants would have a good idea to get started on those trámites. hoped. We thank everybody for their hard Santiago, Silvano. O Cosmopolitismo do pobre. work and their patience. The next report from the Program Chairs Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2004. will appear immediately after the Congress. The planning of special panels and sessions We hope that all planned events will occur Valdés, Zoe. Retrato de una infancia habanaviejera. Nuevos narradores cubanos. has made much progress: The latest high- with all preregistered participants, regardless Madrid: Siruela, 2000. profile acceptances have come from ex- of the dark economic clouds upon us. And President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and we trust the intellectual excitement generated Vallejo, Fernando. La virgen de los sicarios. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. There will by the Congress will do justice to the Bogotá: Santillana, 1994. be special panels on Rethinking Welfare preparatory work and the collective efforts States and Inequalities; on What Constitutes of all the participants and the LASA staff. “Good Research”? Perspectives on Research We are greatly looking forward to seeing you Practice, Research Ethics, and Research all in Rio. Standards of “Truth” from the North and South; on Publishing Your Research in Academic Journals; on Inequalities in New

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ON LASA2009 Rio de Janeiro por KARL ERIK SCHØLLHAMMER

Rio 40 graus? Rio de Janeiro—Cidade Maravilhosa ou índices de violência e do crime. Contudo é Cidade maravilha? Maravilha mutante, em sua versão mais o lugar de encontro e de contraste, entre Purgatório da beleza? contemporânea—é o emblema e cartão natureza e cidade, riqueza e miséria e entre E do caos... postal do Brasil, cidade de muitas faces que história e modernidade. A maioria dos se confunde com a própria imagem do país, turistas que visita o Brasil passa um tempo Capital do sangue quente? abrangendo sua diversidade e seus intensos no Rio, e a visita às praias da zona sul é Do Brasil? contrastes. obrigatória. Poucos, entretanto, chegam a Capital do sangue quente? conhecer a cidade que pulsa do outro lado do Do melhor e do pior? Com a vinda da família real portuguesa no túnel Rebouças—a zona oeste e a baixada Do Brasil... Brasil em 1808, o Rio de Janeiro, que já era fluminense com seus gigantescos complexos Cidade sangue quente? capital da colônia desde 1765, tornou-se de favelas—, apenas enxergada à distância Maravilha mutante... capital do império português e logo do pela elite da zona sul, quando atravessa a império independente e, depois, da república Avenida Brasil e a Linha Vermelha. (Rio 40 graus, música de Fernanda Abreu, federativa. Nesse período, a cidade sofreu Infelizmente, a realidade demográfica carioca Fausto Fawcett e Carlos Laufer) notáveis modificações, com grande está marcada pela segregação social crescimento de sua população, mudanças em facilmente percebida na geografia da cidade. sua topografia— devidas ao desmonte de A fronteira entre zona sul e zona norte diversos morros, aterros—, abertura de dificilmente é transgredida, e o privilégio de grandes avenidas e túneis, além da criação de morar na zona sul pertence apenas a uma diversos marcos arquitetônicos de vários minoria. O Rio continua sendo uma cidade estilos. Em 1960, a capital administrativa foi partida. transferida para Brasília, e o Rio de Janeiro entrou em declínio econômico e político, Hoje, o visitante logo vai se sentir em casa perdendo importância como centro de poder, nos bairros de Ipanema e Leblon, onde mas nunca sua vocação de centro cultural e encontrará uma rica variedade de bares e amálgama criativo. Quem mora no Rio ama restaurantes, seja na Rua Garcia D’Ávila e a cidade e lamenta seus infortúnios. Ser arredores da nas praças Nossa Senhora da carioca não é tanto um atestado de Paz ou nas ruas Dias Ferreira, Ataulfo da nascimento mas um estado de espírito. É Paiva e Conde de Bernadotte, entre muitos uma maneira de ser e de viver que implica outras do Leblon. No Baixo Gávea, perto da gentileza, malícia, orgulho, garra, alegria e PUC-Rio, há pontos tradicionais, oferecendo uma boa dose de tropical melancolia regada opções variadas entre os cardápios de comida a música e boemia, como diria o poeta brasileira típica no Hipódromo e Braseiro e o Torquato Neto. refinamento da cozinha do Guimas. Em Copacabana, a área mais densa e variada da Encravada entre as praias e as montanhas, a zona sul, a dica é confiar na tradição popular cidade oferece uma paisagem natural e investir nos locais considerados clássicos, exuberante, um prazer visual que foi descrito como a Adega Pérola na Siqueira Campos, e homenageado inúmeras vezes em imagem, ou um chá à beira da piscina no Hotel música e literatura e que ainda resiste apesar Copacabana Palace. da ocupação urbana caótica e da precária preservação do patrimônio natural da Nos últimos anos, o centro da cidade vem floresta e da mata tropicais. No imaginário sendo revitalizado, oferecendo excelentes coletivo mundial, o Rio de Janeiro se impõe opções de lazer e cultura, além de livrarias, como capital da alegria, do carnaval e da sebos e restaurantes. Lá, o visitante também exuberância dos corpos expostos, ao mesmo poderá apreciar o inestimável patrimônio tempo em que horroriza com seus altos histórico e arquitetônico da cidade, não

42 apenas de sua fase colonial e neo-clássica, Daqui, muitas opções se abrem. Durante o cheia de meandros e mesclas singulares. mas também do período moderno (Museu de dia uma visita ao comércio popular do Saara, A partir do centro é fácil visitar outros Arte Moderna, Edifício Gustavo Capanema, nas proximidades da Rua Alfândega, é uma bairros históricos bem típicos como Saúde e Aeroporto Santos Dumont, Edifício da forte atração para qualquer olhar curioso e, Gambôa, que ficam atrás da Praça Mauá, ou Associação Brasileira de Imprensa). O ao mesmo tempo, um encontro com os ir em direção à zona oeste no outro lado do visitante pode começar o passeio pelo emigrantes árabes e judeus e, mais canal do Mangue, ou Vila Isabel e Tijuca— Corredor Cultural no Paço Imperial, recentemente, nordestinos e coreanos que o primeiro imortalizado nas canções de Noel atravessar o Arco do Telles, pegar a Rua do aqui convivem pacificamente. Depois, vale a Rosa e o segundo nas crônicas de Nelson Ouvidor em direção à Igreja da Candelária, pena entrar pela Rua do Lavradio, passar por Rodrigues—, cada um com seus encantos, passando por um leque variado de detrás da Catedral Metropolitana e conhecer segredos e desafios. Uma visita ao bairro monumentos, igrejas e construções históricos o bairro boêmio da Lapa, antigo reduto de boêmio de Santa Teresa entretanto é quase assim como centros de cultura (Centro malandros e sambistas, hoje revitalizado pela uma obrigação para quem quer conhecer a Cultural Banco do Brasil, Centro Cultural nova cena musical carioca. A noite na Lapa história da cidade e o charme dessa zona da dos Correios e Casa França-Brasil). é conhecida por suas múltiplas opções de cidade. Há muitas maneiras de se chegar ao Cruzando a Avenida Presidente Vargas em casas de shows, com ritmos brasileiros, como alto de Santa Teresa, uma delas é pegar o direção à Praça Mauá poderá visitar o chorinho, samba, forró, que certamente vale bondinho que atravessa os arcos da Lapa; a Mosteiro e a Igreja de São Bento, um a pena conferir. A outra opção é retornar em estação fica próximo ao Largo da Carioca. belíssimo monumento barroco e uma direção ao Largo de São Francisco com uma Alcançando o topo da montanha, o verdadeiro oásis de paz, cuja entrada parada obrigatória no magnífico Real bondinho segue pelas ruas pavimentadas de discretíssima se faz pela Rua Dom Gerardo. Gabinete Português de Leitura na Rua Luis paralelepípedo passando em frente de casas e Outra boa pedida é o almoço no restaurante de Camões, e eventualmente visitar a galeria palacetes do início do século XX, várias delas Albamar na torre do velho mercado recém-aberta Largo das Artes num belo em refinado estilo art-nouveau ou Jugendstil, municipal na Praça Marechal Âncora, com sobrado colonial. No centro da praça está a hoje meras lembranças da riqueza e vista para a Ilha Fiscal, o que dá a dimensão Igreja de São Francisco da Paula, construída prosperidade dos primeiros moradores desse da antiga cidade e faz imaginar como era a entre os séculos XVIII e XIX; mas também bairro. Hoje, Santa Teresa preserva sua chegada por mar ao Rio de Janeiro antes da vale a pena conhecer o belo prédio neo- independência e, apesar de estar cercada por era da aviação. clássico do Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências favelas, é um bairro de convivência social Sociais (IFCS) da Universidade Federal do tranqüila onde se prolifera grande energia Pode-se também adentrar o Centro pela Rio de Janeiro antes de seguir pela Rua libertária que se expressa na proliferação de Cinelândia e seguir pela Avenida Rio Branco, Gonçalves Dias e procurar um descanso na ateliês artísticos e eventos de cultura e arte ao onde estão localizadas obras primas da belle tradicional confeitaria Colombo. longo do ano. No Largo dos Guimarães há epoque, o Teatro Municipal, a Biblioteca excelentes opções de restaurantes como o Nacional e o Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Para o visitante estrangeiro, a experiência da Sobrenatural, o Bar do Mineiro e o melhor construídos em estilo eclético na primeira cidade normalmente se limita à zona sul, mas almoço de comida nordestina da cidade no década do século XX. No Largo da Carioca no centro da cidade convergem as muitas Bar do Arnaudo, mas vale a pena estender a estão situados a Igreja e o Convento de Santo facetas da cidade e um passeio por essa zona visita para o Largo das Neves, eventualmente Antônio, construídos em 1592 e que hoje torna-se chave para compreender melhor de com uma paradinha no Goiabeira para uma geram um contraste dramático com a onde vem e para onde vai o Rio de Janeiro. cerveja. Santa Teresa parece um bairro modernidade arquitetônica do prédio da É no centro que a diversidade do Rio fica parado no tempo, e só recentemente Avenida Chile. Na rua da Carioca há uma mais evidente e onde uma caminhada de começou-se a aproveitar a variedade de casas rica opção de lojas e prédios charmosos, algumas horas é uma verdadeira viagem no e prédios ignorados pelo mercado imobiliário muitos em estilo neo-clássico; seguindo em tempo, passando por uma multiplicidade de local para criar pousadas e restaurantes para direção à Praça Tiradentes, há teatros e gostos e sabores do rigor português à o visitante e o turista que espera encontrar opções culturais interessantes, como uma extravagância francesa, da ginga africana ao mais no Rio de Janeiro de que a beleza da visita ao Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica ou otimismo do modernismo brasileiro. Há um praia de Copacabana. uma noite de gafieira e samba de raiz no certo caos sedutor no centro que convida o salão de dança tradicional Estudantina. visitante a explorar e descobrir uma cidade

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O primeiro encontro com Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Cidade Maravilhosa (or fear because of high rates of crime and pode ser um descobrimento desafiante. Maravilha Mutante in a more contemporary violence. It is, then, a place of encounters Além de ser uma aula de história do Brasil, version), is both the emblem of Brazil and its and contrasts between nature and city, é uma exposição aos problemas sociais postcard—a city of many faces that is often between wealth and poverty, between the contemporâneos enfrentados nas grandes perceived as the very image of the country, historic past and modernity. metrópoles brasileiras. Quem quer se its diversity and intense contrasts. aproximar mais da realidade da população Most tourists who visit Brazil spend time in mais pobre encontra hoje opções de With the arrival of the Portuguese royal Rio—and going to the beaches of the zona pousadas, hospedagem e programas culturais family in Brazil in 1808, Rio de Janeiro, sul is mandatory. But few get to know the em várias favelas da zona sul como o Morro which had been the capital of the colony city that pulsates on the other side of the do Pereirão, da Conceição, do Cantagalo, da since 1765, became the capital of the Rebouças tunnel, the zona oeste and the Rocinha, do Vidigal, entre outras. Cada Portuguese empire, of the independent baixada fluminense with its huge complex bairro tem sua característica própria e, empire afterwards, and then the capital of of slums; the slums are viewed only at a principalmente na visita aos bairros como the Federal Republic. Over these periods the distance by the elites of the zona sul as they Gloria, Catete, Flamengo e Botafogo, é city has undergone remarkable changes, cross Avenida do Brasil and the Linha possível notar como a cidade se lançou sobre including great population growth, major Vermelha. Unfortunately, carioca o mar para poder se expandir em direção ao changes in topography due to the leveling of demographic reality is marked by highly sul, ímpeto modernizador que culminou com hills and embankments, the construction of visible socioeconomic segregation. Borders a urbanização de São Conrado e da Barra da major avenues and tunnels as well as the between the southern and northern zones are Tijuca na década de 60 e, mais tarde, do creation of landmark architectural projects crossed only with difficulty and the privilege Recreio dos Bandeirantes. Para quem tiver of different styles. In 1960 the national of living in the zona sul belongs to just a tempo e interesse na arte popular brasileira, é administrative capital was moved to Brasília minority. Rio remains a divided city. indispensável uma visita ao museu Casa do and Rio de Janeiro entered into a period of Pontal no Recreio dos Bandeirantes, que economic and political decline, losing Visitors, then, will immediately feel at home abriga a belíssima coleção de Jacques Van de importance as a center of power—but not its in the neighborhoods of Ipanema and Beuque, o maior e mais significativo acervo place as a center of cultural and artistic Leblon, where they will find a wide variety de arte popular do país. Os bairros de expression. Those who reside in Rio love of bars and restaurants in Rua Garcia dentro, como Laranjeiras, Cosme Velho e the city and lament its misfortunes. Being D’Ávila and in the outskirts of Our Lady Jardim Botânico, Lagoa e Gávea, carioca is not so much a testament of place of Peace Plaza, and on the Dias Ferreira, conseguiram manter-se melhor preservados as it is a state of mind and spirit. It is a way Ataulfo of Paiva and Conde de Bernadotte do processo de crescimento urbano of being and living that conveys at once a Leblon streets—among many others in acelerado, embora também neles haja sense of kindness, malice, pride, defiance, Leblon. In Baixo Gávea near PUC-Rio there exemplos crassos da urbanização informal e joy—and a strong dose of tropical are multiple points of gastronomic interest, da chamada verticalização das favelas. Um melancholy merged to music and to the offering choices that vary from typical dos principais desafios para o novo governo bohemian, as the poet Torquato Neto would Brazilian food in the Hipódromo and do estado e, em particular para o novo say. Braseiro to the refined cuisine of Guimas. prefeito da cidade, será a regularização In Copacabana, the densest and most diverse democrática do crescimento espontâneo e Nestled between beaches and mountains, the area of the southern zone, the trick is to descontrolado na zona oeste e zona norte. city offers an exuberant landscape, a visual trust the popular tradition and stop in places Rio de Janeiro é uma cidade que se vive pleasure that has been described and praised considered classics, like Adega Pérola in como muitas cidades, cada uma com seu countless times in the visual arts, music and Siqueira Campos or have tea by the pool at perfil particular e o prazer do encontro literature—and a city which still stands tall the Hotel Copacabana Palace. colabora com a capacidade do visitante de despite urban chaos and slim successes in viver sua multiplicidade. preserving a precious natural ecology. The A revitalized city center offers excellent world imagines Rio as a joyous capital, a options for recreation and culture, as well place for carnival and exuberant near- as bookstores, snack bars, and restaurants. nakedness, but also as a place that strikes Here the visitor can view aspects of the

44 priceless historical and architectural heritage From here, many options. During the day in Gambôa behind Mauá Square, or to go west of the city—not just of the colonial and neo- the area around Rua Alfândega you may to the other side of the Mangue channel, or classical period but also of the modern era, wish to visit the popular Sahara market. to Vila Isabel and Tijuca—the former in the Museum of Modern Art, the Gustavo Here you will be among immigrants of many immortalized in the songs of Noel Rosa and Capanema building, Santos Dumont airport ethnic backgrounds and nationalities who the latter in the chronicles of Nelson and the Brazilian Press Association building. live and work together in harmony. After Rodrigues—each with its charms, secrets and Visitors can begin touring at the Cultural this you can proceed to Lavradio Street, go challenges. A visit to the bohemian Corridor in the Imperial Palace, continue to behind the Metropolitan Cathedral and visit neighborhood of Santa Teresa is almost a the Arco do Telles, take Rua do Ouvidor the bohemian neighborhood of Lapa, a must for anyone wishing to know the history toward Igreja da Candelária to see a variety former hangout for malandros and sambistas of the city and the charm of this zone. of monuments, churches and historical that has been revitalized by the new carioca There are many ways to reach the top of buildings as well as centers of culture musical scene. A night in Lapa offers many Santa Teresa; one of them is to take the (Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Centro choices of shows that feature Brazilian cable car that crosses the Lapa arches. The Cultural dos Correios and Casa França- rhythms such as chorinho, samba, forró, station is next to the Largo da Carioca. Brasil). Crossing President Vargas Avenue certainly worth experiencing. An alternative Reaching the top of the mountain, the cable toward Plaza Mauá you can visit the is to return toward Largo San Francisco with car follows streets of paralelepípedo, passing Monastery and Church of St. Benedict, a a compulsory stop at the magnificent Real in front of early twentieth century houses beautiful Baroque monument and a real Gabinete Português de Leitura in Rua Luis and palaces, many of which are in fine Art oasis of peace with its discreet entrance on de Camões and possibly visit the newly Nouveau or Jugendstil style—now mere Rua Dom Gerardo. Next try lunch in the opened Largo das Artes gallery, situated in a memories of the wealth and prosperity of the Albamar restaurant in the tower of the old lovely colonial loft. At the center of the early residents of that neighborhood. Today, municipal market in Marechal Âncora Plaza; square is Igreja de São Francisco da Paula, Santa Teresa preserves its identity, and is, it overlooks the Ihla Fiscal and conveys an built between the eighteenth and nineteenth despite being surrounded by slums, a quiet idea of the size of the old city as well as a centuries; also worth seeing is the beautiful neighborhood that expresses its libertarian sense of how it might have been to arrive in neoclassical building of the Institute of energy in the proliferation of workshops and Rio by sea, before the aviation era. Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Federal artistic and cultural events throughout the University (IFCS) before proceeding along year. In Largo dos Guimarães one has You can also enter the heart of Rio through the Rua Gonçalves Dias and looking to relax excellent choices of restaurants like Cinelândia and follow Avenida Rio Branco at Colombo, the traditional pastry shop. Sobrenatural, and Bar do Mineiro. The best to see masterpieces of the Belle Epoque, the Northeastern lunch can be savored at Bar Teatro Municipal, Biblioteca Nacional, and Visitors limiting their explorations to the Arnaud, but it is worth extending the trip to the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes—all built south zone miss discovering that the city Largo das Neves for a short stop for a beer in the eclectic style of the first decade of the center is key to a better understanding of at Goiabeira. Santa Teresa neighborhood twentieth century. In Largo da Carioca see where this multifaceted city came from and looks like a place frozen in time but recently the Igreja and o Convento de Santo Antônio, where it is going. It is in the center that the there has appeared a variety of homes and built in 1592; it generates a dramatic diversity of Rio de Janeiro is most evident buildings with inns and restaurants for the contrast with the modern architecture of the and where a walk of several hours is a real visitor who hopes to find more in Rio de buildings on Avenida Chile. You will find journey in time through a variety of Janeiro than just the beauty of Copacabana Largo da Carioca to have a rich choice of authentic tastes and flavors from the beach. shops and charming buildings, many neo- elemental Portuguese to the French classical in style, and going towards Praça extravagance, from the swing of Africa to The first encounter with Rio de Janeiro may Tiradentes you will discover interesting the optimism of modern Brazil. There is a be challenging: besides being a history class theaters and cultural sites such as the Centro certain seductive chaos in the center that of sorts, it also is an exposure to social de Arte Hélio Oiticica, or a night of dancing invites the visitor to explore and discover a problems currently facing large cities in gafieira and samba de raiz in the traditional city full of meanderings and singular Brazil. The person who wishes to be closer Estudantina hall. blendings. From the center is easy to visit to the reality of life for the poorest people other historical districts like Saúde and can find living accommodations and cultural

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programs in various favelas of zona sul, like Morro do Pereirão, Conceição, Cantagalo, Rocinha, and Vidigal, among others. Each neighborhood is unique and in visits to districts such as Gloria, Catete, Flamengo and Botafogo one can see how an expanding city has pushed southward toward the sea, producing a modernizing impetus that created the suburbs of São Conrado and Barra da Tijuca in the 60s, and later, Recreio dos Bandeirantes.

For those with interests in Brazilian folk art, a visit to the museum in the Casa do Pontal in Recreio dos Bandeirantes is essential: it has the largest and most significant collection of folk art in the country, with a marvelous grouping of the works of Jacques Van de Beuque.

Interior neighborhoods like Laranjeiras, Cosme Velho and Jardim Botânico, Lagoa and Gávea have managed for the most part to shield themselves from accelerated urban growth—although within some of them there are gross instances of “informal” urbanization and the so-called verticalization of slums. One of the major challenges for the new government of the state, and particularly for the new mayor of the city, is the democratization of the spontaneous and uncontrolled growth in the west and north zones. Rio de Janeiro has a unique profile, and a full appreciation of the city is enhanced by the opportunity of the visitor to have an intimate and pleasurable experience with its great diversity.

46 NEWS FROM LASA

LASA Voluntary Support by SANDY KLINZING

Muchísimas gracias, muito obrigados, thank you! In a year Richard Adams Philip Brenner when difficult economic conditions have taken their toll on Jeremy Adelman Ronald Briggs contributions to non-profit organizations, LASA members Max Aguero Fernandez Natalie Brody and friends have continued to dig deeply into their pockets to Sandra Aguilar Rodríguez Sherwin Bryant support the Association. Over $43,661 in contributions were Alethia Alfonso García Karl Buck received during 2008, including $25,000 to establish the new Alejandro Alvarez Bejar Jo-Marie Burt Diskin Dissertation Award, which will be presented for the Silvia Alvarez Curbelo Bruce Calder first time at LASA2009 in Rio de Janeiro. Helene Anderson Emilce Cammarata Joan Anderson Taina Caragol LASA was additionally honored to welcome three new Life Robert Anderson Adalberto Cardoso Members since our last report, bringing to 68 the number of Ronald Angel Glen Carman individuals who have made this significant commitment. We Clara Maria Araújo Joyce Carman are highly indebted to Eduardo Silva, Gabriela Soto Laveaga Benjamin Arditi Karlik Hubert Carton de Grammont and Anthony Bebbington for choosing a LASA Life Membership! Ariel Armony William Castro Cynthia Arnson Denise Cavalheiro Leite We send our most sincere thank you to these individual Maria Ines Arratia Federico Chalupa donors to all LASA funds during 2008. Many people selected Jonathan Arries Paul Michael Chandler multiple funds and made repeated gifts during the year. Their Eduardo Arturo Norma Chinchilla contributions will support travel to the Rio meeting and help Wendy Ashmore Peter Cleaves LASA see to it that Congress participation is made available William Atkins Deb Cohen to colleagues everywhere who wish to take part. We look Karen Atkison Patricia Coldwell forward to seeing you in Rio and to introducing you to the Craig Auchter Cristina Contera grantees that will benefit from your thoughtfulness. (For Robert Austin Janet Conway additional information on Life Memberships or any of the Javier Auyero Nicholas Copeland LASA Funds please contact the Secretariat at 412-648-1907 Claudia Avellaneda Jack Corbett or at [email protected].) Luis Fernando Ayerbe James Corcoran Florence Babb Romer Cornejo Mervyn John Bain Javier Corrales Helga Baitenmann Victoria Cox Llana Barber Linda Craft Cleoni Maria Barboza Fernandes Marta Cruz Concepcion Anne Barnhart Héctor Cruz-Feliciano Sarah Barrow Marco Cupolo de Maio Lourdes Bates Ivan Darias Alfonso Florencia Bazzano Nelson Rafael Dávila-Franco Peter Beattie Guillermo De La Peña Emilio Bejel Claudia de Lima Costa Alvaro Bello Maldonado Aurelio De los Reyes Suzy Denise Bermúdez Quintana Isabel De Sena Louis Bickford Angelo Ricardo de Souza Nicholas Birns Anna Deeny Cole Blasier Carmen Diana Deere David Block Nancy Deffebach Fabian Borges-Herrero Jill DeTemple Tarcisio Botelho Rut Diamint Kirk Bowman Ubaldina Díaz Romero Viviane Brachet-Marquez Dorothy Dillon

47 lasaforum WINTER 2009 : VOLUME XL : ISSUE 1

VOLUNTARY SUPPORT continued…

John Dinges Mariela Sonia Jiménez Vásquez Maria Teresa Miceli Kerbauy Francesca Rivera Joseph Dorsey Gladys Jiménez-Muñoz Carmen Millán de Benavides María Gladys Rivera Herrejon Isabel Dos Santos Amy Kaminsky Maxine Molyneux Karen Robert Gordon Eaton Temma Kaplan Tommie Sue Montgomery- Cristina Rodrigues Marc Edelman Robert Karl Abrahams María Carolina Rodríguez Acero Edward Epstein Terry Karl Sergio Hugo Moreno Maria Rogal June Carolyn Erlick Friedrich Katz Kimberly Morse Francisco Rojas-Aravena Sylvia Escárcega Leisa Kauffmann Dorothy Mosby Veneranda Rubeo Dina Fachin Margaret Keck Robert Moser Helen Safa Maria Soledad Falabella Luco A. Douglas Kincaid Maria Encarnación Moya Recio Héctor Luis Saint-Pierre Paul Fallon Masao Kinoshita William Mullin Rossana Salazar Alceu Ferraro Gwen Kirkpatrick Elsa Muñiz David Salisbury Ricardo Ffrench-Davis Chuck Kleymeyer David Myhre Sergio Sánchez Diaz Cornelia Butler Flora Benjamin Kohl June Nash Robert Sayre Jan Flora Robert Kruger Mauro Neves Junior Joseph Scarpaci Jose Flores Aurélie La Torré Katja Newman Patience Schell James Foster Lisa Laplante Bettina Ng’Weno Andrew Schlewitz Claire Fox Brooke Larson Katiane Nóbrega Ella Schmidt Bonnie Frederick Alex Latta Liisa North Jalane Schmidt Christian Freres Linda Ledford-Miller Carrie Norton Marianne Schmink Henry Frundt Elizabeth Leeds William Nylen Ben Ross Schneider Leo Garofalo Kathryn Lehman Guillermo O’Donnell Tamara Schoenbaum Jonathan Golden Rogerio Leite Karl Offen Barbara Schroder Mary Goldsmith Michelle Lenoue Maria Rosa Olivera-Williams Margaret Schwartz Carlos Eduardo Gomes Siqueira Daniel Levy Sutti Ortiz T.M. (Tomás) Scruggs Juan Gonzalez Mendoza Linda Lewin Alberto Ortiz, Jr. David Shirk Geoff Goodwin Laura Lewis Victor Padilla Emma Lorena Sifuentes Colin Gordon Annette Lilly Rafael Palma Grayeb Ocegueda Laura Graham Jorge Linares Ortiz Cynthia Palmer Lynn Sikkink Pamela Graham Soledad Loaeza Erika Pani João dos Reis Silva Jr. Kathleen Grainger Paul Lokken Milagros Pereyra-Rojas Cláudio Silveira Paul Greenough Mary Long Anibal Perez-Liñan J. Richard Simon Merilee Grindle Ryan Long Angela Pérez-Mejía Russell Smith Adela Yomara Guerra Aguijosa Thely Lopes Corinne Pernet Archibald Spencer Carla Guerrón Montero Susan Lord Thomas Perreault Silvia Spitta Matthew Gutmann Lois Lorentzen Stephen Perz William Stanley Charles Hale James Loucky Melesio Peter-Espinoza Margaret Stanton Lenore Hale Elizabeth Lozano Sonja Pieck Sally States Marion and Stephen Hall David Luis-Brown Alexandra Pita González James Steele Elizabeth Hamill Ana Bertha Luna Miranda Juan Poblete Lynn Stephen Nora Hamilton Marianella Machado Sara Poggio Alexander Stevens Regina Harrison Andrae Marak Renato Prada Oropeza John Stolle-McAllister Jonathan Hartlyn Alberto Martín Alvarez Jason Pribilsky Mary Strottman Paul Haslam Concepcion Martinez-Maske Marie Price Angela Stuesse Julie Hempel Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel Carlos Quenan Juana Suárez James Henderson Francine Masiello Luisa Quintero Ramírez Yuriko Takahashi Lucila Hinojosa Córdova Katherine McCaffrey Rosana Ramalho de Castro Maria Herminia Tavares de Emily Hogue Cynthia McClintock Sabeth Ramirez Almeida Lasse Hölck Mary McCue Ana Ramírez Barreto Clark Taylor Evelyne Huber Gillian McGillivray Gabriela Ramos Lucy Frances Annie Taylor Juan Enrique Huerta Wong Scott McKinney Joanne Rappaport Benjamín Temkin Yedwab Christine Hunefeldt Teresa Meade Mark Ratkus Lucero Tenorio-Gavin Carlos Manuel Indacochea Luz Mena Patricia Ravelo Blancas Lorrin Thomas Ernesto Isunza Vera Claudia Mendez Martha Rees Joseph Thome Jean Jackson Gilbert Merkx José Requena Rosemary Thorp Eva-Lynn Jagoe Susan Metz Graciela Clotilde Riquelme Heidi Tinsman Andrea Jeftanovic William Meyers Amy Ritterbusch M. Gabriela Torres

48 Susana Torres Diskin Dissertation Fellowship Patricia Tovar Rojas Miren Uriarte Thanks to the support of the donors listed below, the first Diskin Dissertation Fellowship will be Fernando Urrea Giraldo awarded at the 2009 LASA Congress in Rio. With your help, and the generous donations from María Eugenia Valdés Vega Oxfam and from LASA, we met our goal of raising 25 thousand dollars, which will endow the Ruth Valenzuela fellowship in perpetuity. Your commitment to and participation in initiatives like this one are what María del Carmen Valverde helps make LASA a vibrant organization, deeply engaged with the issues of the day. The text of the Donna Lee Van Cott call for nominations follows: Stefano Varese Gabriela Vargas-Cetina Laura Velasco Ortiz The Oxfam-LASA Diskin Dissertation Fellowship Carolyn Ann Walker Ronald Waterbury The award will be presented to an advanced doctoral student or recent Ph.D. The Award William Waters Committee will employ three criteria in its evaluations: 1) Overall scholarly credentials, based on the Barbara Weinstein candidate’s curriculum vitae; 2) The quality of writing, research and analysis in the dissertation Clifford Welch outline and sample chapter submitted; 3) The primary advisor’s letter of recommendation. The Cassandra White definition of activist scholarship shall remain broad and pluralist, to be discussed and interpreted by Robert Wilcox each selection committee. Stephen Henry Wilkinson Heather Williams Thanks to the generous support from: Ann Felicity Williams Daniel Justin Wolfe Emily and Ben Achtenberg Jean Jackson Wendy Wolford Florence Babb Karen Judd Angus Wright Helga Baitenmann Louis Kampf Junichi Yamamoto Alan Berger Bill Leogrande Victor Yang Pamela Berger James Loucky Marc Zimmerman Cole Blasier Brinton Lykes Víctor Zúñiga Carole H. Browner Katherine T. McCaffrey Jim Campen & Phyllis Ewen Cynthia McClintock Marta Casaus Marylin Moors We are also extremely grateful Ronald Chilcote Judith Norsigian to these organizations for Norma Chinchilla Milagros Pereyra their matching contributions Nicholas Copeland Jane Pincus for donor gifts: Saul Diskin Nancy Postero Open Society Institute Vilunya Diskin Richard Reed The Ford Foundation Marc Edelman Helen Safa Jonathan Fox Biswapriya Sanyal Pat Goudvis Marianne Schmink Matthew Gutmann Rose Spalding Charles and Leonore Hale Jack Spence and Kathy Yih Charles R. Hale Lynn Stephen Nora Hamilton George Vickers Timothy Harding Jack Womack James Howe

Note: The endowed fellowship fund will gladly accept additional donations, which would allow us to increase the value of the dissertation fellowship over time.

49 lasaforum WINTER 2009 : VOLUME XL : ISSUE 1

LASA SECTIONS Section News

The Colombia Section of LASA is pleased to an outstanding work in the disciplines of announce the competition for the Monserrat History, Anthropology, Political Science or Ordóñez Prize and the Michael Jiménez Prize. Sociology that significantly advances an Montserrat Ordóñez (d. 2001, Bogotá), understanding of Colombian social dedicated her life to the study and promotion transformations and society. The prize will of Latin American women’s literature and the recognize an essay collection or monograph search for new forms of literary expression based on original research that employs and language. The $500 Ordóñez Prize will innovative theoretical, methodological, or be awarded to an outstanding book that conceptual approaches and demonstrates continues this project. The work should be clear excellence and promise in shaping pathbreaking and should embody a fresh and contemporary debates in the field of creative approach to the study of language Colombian studies. and strengthens an innovative vision of the Colombian humanities. Submissions may For further information about eligibility take the form of narratives, ethnographies, and submission requirements for books biographies, historical accounts, memoirs, or published in 2006-08), please consult: essay collections. The Michael Jiménez Prize . USA) and his inspiring work on different aspects of 19th and 20th century Colombian History. This $500 prize will be awarded to

50 PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL NOTES

In Memoriam

It is with great sorrow that we announce the Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity and share her data and she even gave me passing of longtime LASA member Donna Politics, addressed the propagation of ethnic transcripts of dozens of her interviews to use Lee Van Cott. We have lost a prolific writer, political parties in four Latin American in my own research. Thanks to Donna, tireless field researcher, and generous countries (including Colombia and Bolivia), indigenous politics is a mainstream topic of colleague. Dr. Van Cott was known widely to and their concomitant failure in two others scholarship and an essential component of students of Andean politics, indigenous rights (Argentina and Peru). Finally, her last book, coursework on Latin America. I can’t think of movements and political institutions. She was Radical Democracy in the Andes, published anyone more passionate and knowledgeable an esteemed friend and colleague to many in just last year, assessed the record of about indigenous politics in Latin America.” LASA, and was one of the most promising— indigenous parties in power at the local levels, and successful—scholars of her generation. principally in Bolivia and Ecuador. Van Cott’s energy in the lecture hall was perhaps no surprise given her musical Associate Professor of Political Science at the Taken together, Dr. Van Cott’s books narrate background. A talented guitarist and singer, University of Connecticut when she died, Dr. the institutionalization of passionate and Van Cott released Eclipse, an album of her Van Cott was perhaps best known to LASA professional indigenous movements that music, in 2000. Her artistic energies also members as the founder of the Section on evolved from social movements to political produced poems which were published in The Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples, parties, to mayors and city councils, and the New Formalist in 2008. She ends a poem which she headed from 2003-2005, and vitality of these transitions. Her work was titled “Advice” with the following lines: which now has several hundred members. vital in chronicling the conversion of these Her academic career, launched with a Ph.D. movements to governments as a No one ever gets to ever do all from Georgetown University’s Department of demonstration of their capability and they were meant to do. Bite into what Government in 1998, was capped by three determination. Always adhering to the is true. Remember, nothing is too big to lose critically acclaimed monographs: The highest standards in field research and or too small. Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics writing, Van Cott’s objective and critical of Diversity in Latin America (2000, depictions of the struggles of movement Donna Lee Van Cott perhaps did not get to University of Pittsburgh Press), From leaders trying to retain their original policies do all she was meant to do, but she will be Movements to Parties in Latin America: and yet appeal to constantly wider groups of remembered for her impressive scholarship, The Evolution of Ethnic Politics (2005, constituencies, have had an enduring impact wicked sense of humor, and the Cambridge University Press), and Radical on the study of Latin America’s indigenous encouragement she gave to so many of us. Democracy in the Andes (2008, Cambridge peoples, on ethnic politics, movements, and In memory of her tireless work to try to University Press). parties, on constitutional change, diminish the resource gap between U.S. and multicultural rights, and on local governance. Latin American colleagues, donations are David Samuels of the University of Minnesota being accepted by the LASA Secretariat in characterized Van Cott as “among the very A Fulbright Fellow, former associate at the Dr. Van Cott’s name to the LASA Travel Fund best and most influential political scientists Inter-American Dialogue in Washington and for Latin American Scholars. who studied indigenous politics in Latin former fellow at the Helen Kellogg Institute America,” but also lauded her dynamic style for International Peace at the University of Todd Eisenstadt, American University and sharp humor. “She had stage presence, a Notre Dame, Van Cott received numerous José Antonio Lucero, University of sense of humor, and an engaging, even awards and was a coveted speaker. Van Cott Washington, Seattle entertaining presentation style, while testified before the U.S. Congress, and remaining serious and professional. This is a presented work regularly in forums from rare combination, and was impressive to see.” Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Quito, Ecuador, including many policy venues and A careful balancer of institutional and societal international institutions like the United considerations, the first of Van Cott’s major Nations, the U.S. State Department, and the works, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past, United States Institute for Peace. covered the constitutional reforms of the 1990s fostering greater ethnic group In addition to her extensive publication record participation (especially in Bolivia and and her active participation in professional Colombia). Her next book, From associations like LASA, Van Cott was a Movements to Parties in Latin America, passionate teacher and mentor. According to which won the 2006 Best Book on Mala Htun of the New School for Social Comparative Politics Award from the Research, “Donna was always willing to

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,HYUHU4(PU3H[PU(TLYPJHUHUK*HYPIILHU:[\KPLZ PUVUL`LHY 7YLWHYLMVYHWYVMLZZPVUVYH7O+WYVNYHT )LULMP[MYVT[OLTHU`\UPX\LYLZV\YJLZH]HPSHISL[V [OVZL^OVZ[\K`3H[PU(TLYPJHHUK[OL*HYPIILHUH[ *VS\TIPH

(WWSPJH[PVU+LHKSPUL(WYPSMVY[OL-HSS ZLTLZ[LY -VYTVYLPUMVYTH[PVUWSLHZLJVU[HJ[THYZSHJ'JVS\TIPHLK\O[[W!PSHZJVS\TIPHLK\THYZSHJ 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 5,500 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. Nonprofit Org. US POSTAGE PAID Pittsburgh, PA 416 Bellefield Hall Permit No. 511 University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260

lasa.international.pitt.edu