Herman W. Konrad, interdisciplinary scholar of colonial New Spain and the Yucatán, and founder of the Canadian Association of Mexican Studies, died May 30, 1997, after a long battle against lung cancer. He was 61.
Konrad was born on November 5, 1935, on his family homestead at Poplar Hill on the northern farming frontier of Alberta, Canada, the last of II children in a German-speaking Mennonite family. As a young man, he volunteered for service with the Mennonite Central Committee for work in Paraguay, where he operated heavy road construction equipment in the Chaco, learned Spanish, and developed his enduring passions for Latin American history, anthropology, and the environment. He graduated in history and psychology at the University of British Columbia (1962), studied at the Associated Mennonite Seminary at Elkhart, Indiana, and completed a master’s degree at the University of Chicago in early modern European history (1964). To support his studies, he worked as a Chicago bus driver. Returning to his interest in Latin America, Konrad studied for the Ph.D. in anthropology and history with professors Julian Pitt-Rivers and Friedrich Katz of the University of Chicago, and with Charles Gibson of the University of Michigan, who supervised his doctoral dissertation. In 1966-67 he held a Ford Foundation doctoral research fellowship. Then Konrad directed the Instituto Interuniversitario para Investigaciones Fundamentales en Ciencias Sociales (1967-69), a position that allowed him to meet his future wife, Candelaria Arceo de Konrad, and opened his life-long research interests concerning the chicle industry, Maya village culture, and tropical environments. In 1969 he took up a post in anthropology and history at the University of Calgary, which he held throughout his career.
Inspired by Charles Gibson’s The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-1810 (Stanford, 1964), Konrad wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Jesuit hacienda of Santa Lucía from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Subsequently he spent several years conducting research in the Archivo General de la Nacíon and other collections to examine Jesuit estate management and, more generally, to explore the complex institution of the greater hacienda. The final result, A Jesuit Hacienda in Colonial Mexico: Santa Lucía, 1576-1767 (Stanford, 1980), was awarded the
Herbert E. Bolton Prize in 1981. In his subsequent research, Konrad turned to Yucatán, where he conducted field and archival research on the history of the chicle industry and the roles of Maya chicleros in the international chewing gum market. He held many research grants funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council, and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Business. Konrad’s book manuscript on the chicle industry was almost complete at the time of his death. In addition, he researched several long-term projects connected with the historical impact of hurricanes and the management of tropical forests in Mexico and Central America. Konrad presented many scholarly papers on these subjects and published numerous book chapters and articles. When he fell ill with cancer he resisted with characteristic tenacity and absolutely refused to succumb in any respect. Until almost the very end of his life he continued to teach his courses and to work toward completing several major projects.
Konrad dedicated considerable time and enthusiasm to the development of scholarly ties between Canada and Mexico. He served as president of the Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (1986-87) and founded the Canadian Association of Mexican Studies. He became interested in the traditions surrounding rodeos in North America and published on the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In recognition of his scholarly achievements and contributions to Mexican studies, on June 13, 1996, in Calgary, President Ernesto Zedillo awarded Konrad the Order of the Aguila Azteca, Mexico’s highest distinction for a foreign citizen. Konrad is the first Canadian academic to have received this recognition.
Konrad was a life-long seeker of knowledge and an innovative proponent of interdisciplinary research on Mexico and Latin America. He was adventurous, innovative, skeptical, critical, and always an irascible opponent of bureaucracy and numbing red tape. While university presidents, politicians, and diplomats often shuddered under Konrad’s constructive criticisms, his undergraduate and graduate students loved him for his guidance and good teaching. He introduced many graduate students and colleagues to the archives of Mérida and to fieldwork in the villages and forests of the Yucatán.
Herman Konrad will be remembered for his vitality and breadth by both historians and anthropologists. A dynamic scholar, a powerful proponent of Mexican studies, and a man blessed by a remarkable sense of humor, he will be profoundly missed by his friends, colleagues, and students in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
