LatinAmericaN Washington University in Saint Louis e Number 11 Spring 2019 PRESENTATION w Mabel Moraña William H. Gass Professor in Arts and Sciences Director of the Latin American Studies Program s Welcome to the new issue of the Latin American Newsletter. We are happy to l report that our program continues to grow both at the graduate and at the undergraduate level, and that students are taking advantage of the opportunity to expand their knowledge and understanding of the Latin American region through a great variety of interdisciplinary e courses, film series, colloquia, and the like. This specialization has proven to be very useful in the job market, allowing our graduates to find good positions in competitive institutions and to qualify for admission in research universities in order to continue their studies. Our program continues to be the launching pad for students attending prestigious programs in t graduate schools that include Columbia, Georgetown and the University of California-Los Angeles, as well as students who work in government, advocacy, law and international organizations. Both the major and minor in Latin American Studies are programs central to the ac- t ademic and diversity missions of the university. Our program serves a significant number of Latinx and Latin American students both through the classroom and through the academic engagement with their culture and heritage. In addition, core courses in Latin American e Studies directly serve 150 students or so every year, providing a gateway to study abroad, a pathway to engage in the challenges and rewarding intercultural experiences of a global- ized world, and a route into the professionalization of their Latin American interests. r During the past few months we continued with the work-in-progress sessions in the Latin American Colloquium and also held a symposium on the peace-process in Co- lombia. The wide attendance and enthusiastic participation of students was key for the successful development of these activities. We are happy to inform that the Latin American Studies Program has received au- thorization to hire a post-doctoral fellow to teach courses in our program, and to advance his/her research at this university. We are conducting a search for somebody qualified to teach courses on Brazilian culture, an area of study that is not currently covered in our program, so please check the course offering for next semester to find new topics in this area of study. We have a busy agenda of academic activities ahead of us. The most prominent announcement is the V South by Midwest International Conference in Latin American Cul- tural Studies. It will feature an amazing group of scholars from anthropology, sociology, history and cultural studies, who will come to our university to speak on the topic of migra- tion and borders. The title for the conference is Liquid Borders / Fronteras liquidas and will take place at Wash U in October 2,3, and 4, 2019. We expect to see all of you at the sessions and count on your active participation. Finally, I am extremely happy and proud to announce that Professor Ignacio Sánchez Prado (Nacho), has received a special Chair at Washington University. Please congratulate Nacho for this outstanding achievement and plan on attending his installation Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in Arts and Sciences in the next few months. Faculty Works in Progress Bret Gustafson Energy and Empire documents the ways in which a natural-gas boom in Bolivia is transform- ing its politics, culture and the economy. The word “empire” in the title of the book is a reference to the longer historical domination of the United States and of a particular form of fossil-fuel-dependent capitalist growth that underlies the global environ- mental crisis of global warming — and the skewed and unequal relationship between places like Bo- livia and the consuming countries. In many ways, the book is an attempt to critique this relationship — between empire, fossil fuels and a particular form of development — and to imagine how countries like Boliv- ia are both trapped within yet seeking to move beyond this dependent relationship. The book attempts to explore the contradictions of a left-leaning government pursuing social and political transformation while dependent on the resources (rents) from a natural gas development apparatus that is dominated by and dependent on multinational capitalist firms. I suggest that a key challenge for the left is rethinking its paradigms in an age of global warming and a world dominated by fossil capital that is closely aligned with militarism and an imperialism based on finance (or fossil) capital. The argument I make is that beyond the apparent benefits in economic growth, and the efforts made by the government to redistribute that growth in the near term, that the ecological and social impacts of gas development are, in the longer term, environmen- tally destructive and socially regressive. This mirrors the effects of fossil fuels globally. I have attempted to write a book that is both from the North and from the South, and about the relationships between them. At the risk of being accused of trying to “appropriate” voices, I have spent enough time in Bolivia to recognize what scholar- ship rooted in Bolivia looks like, and what scholarship rooted in an imperial center like the United States looks like. I aspire to write at least closer to the former, de- spite my gringo status, than the latter. The latter — writing from the imperial center, however decadent that center is rapidly becoming — is usually blind and provincial, often presuming to know what Bolivia or Bolivians should do, and deploys catego- ries to that end. For example, the idea of “energy security” frequently dominates the way that U.S. scholars talk about Bolivia, whereas that category has little direct rel- evance to the ways that Bolivians understand and talk about the politics of gas. So, which categories should we use? In a small way, I hope to challenge these U.S.-cen- tric paradigms, since, in many ways, those ways of thinking are part of the problem. 2 Miguel Valerio Miguel Valerio is finishing up his first book, The Black Kings and Queens of Colonial Mexico City: Identity, Perfor- mance, and Power, 1539-1640. This book focuses on four documented instances (1539, 1608, 1610, and 1640) in which Afro-Mexicans performed with their “king and queen” in the streets of Mexico City. Through the analysis of lesser- known printed texts and archival sources, The Black Kings and Queens of Colonial Mexico City documents the forma- tion of Afro-Mexicans’ creole identity through this performative genre. In so doing, the book seeks to bring to the foreground of Latin American colonial literary studies a central component of colonial culture that has gone ignored for the most part since the inception of the field. Latin American colonial literary studies have traditionally privileged white lettered culture, while since the 1980s there has been increasing interest in indigenous texts. What has been lacking is attention to the performative creole (American) culture developed by Afrodescendants, even though this culture is represented in many colonial texts. Thus, my study of this culture in Mexico City serves to expand and move the field of colonial liter- ary studies in a new direction, toward an understanding of black creole identity in colonial Latin America. The Black Kings and Queens of Colonial Mexico City makes a major contribution to the study of race and racism in early modernity. There are relatively few works focusing on racial categories in the colonial context within the field of Latin American colonial literary studies (Magali M. Carrera 2003, Ruth Hill 2005). However, a new generation of scholars, myself included, are highlighting how European racial ideologies were formed during and, at the same time, were instrumental to imperial expansion and informed the modus essendi and vivendi of colonial society (Daniel Nemser 2017, James Sweet 2005). I address this topic in Chapter One, where I analyze the legal investigation (causa) of a group of Afro-Mexicans who “elected and crowned a king and queen” on Christmas Eve, 1608. I argue, on the one hand, that this case helps us further understand how race making functioned in early modernity. On the other hand, I contend that it is against the backdrop of this hostil- ity toward Afro-Mexican festive practices that we must consider the other texts discussed in the book. Viewed from the perspective of colonial authorities’ resistance to any form of black autonomy, the other texts discussed in the book underscore how Afro-Mexicans developed varied strategies for navigating the colonial polity. Beyond its contribution to colonial studies, The Black Kings and Queens of Colonial Mexico City remaps the black Atlantic in two ways: temporally and geographically. Temporally, the texts I analyze in The Black Kings and Queens of Colonial Mexico City form the earliest known evidence Afrodescendants’ festive practices in the Americas. These texts document the emergence and formative years of the black Atlantic. Geographically, these texts further inscribe Mexico City, one of the world’s first global cities, within the black Atlantic, in whose debates it has not featured predominantly. Thus, my book extends the black Atlantic beyond the circum-At- lantic rim to which it has been confined thus far. At the same time, my study underscores Mexico City’s role— as colonial Latin America’s oldest and largest metropolis—in the emergence of the modern black Atlantic. The Black Kings and Queens of Colonial Mexico City also contributes to the growing scholarship on black agency in colonial Latin America. Recently, black agency in colonial Latin America has been studied in many realms: the legal system (Herman Bennett 2006, José Ramón Jouve Martín 2005), clothing (Tamara J.