Conference on Latin American History Awards 1998
distinguished service award
John Lynch, University of London
herbert e. bolton memorial prize
William B. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico, Stanford University Press, 1996
Honorable Mention: Thomas F. O’Brien, The Revolutionary Mission: American Enterprise in Latin America, 1900-1945, Cambridge University Press, 1996
Honorable Mention: Susan Elizabeth Ramirez, The World Upside Down: Cross-Cultural Contact and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Peru, Stanford University Press, 1996
howard f. cline memorial prize
Karen Vieira Powers, Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogensis, and the State in Colonial Quito, University of New Mexico Press, 1995
Honorable Mention: Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture: 1500-1700, University of Oklahoma Press, 1995
conference on latin american history prize
Thomas Miller Klubock, “Working-Class Masculinity, Middle-Class Morality, and Labor Politics in the Chilean Copper Mines,” Journal of Social History 30, no. 2 (1996)
Honorable Mention: Michael J. Schroeder, “Horse Thieves to Rebels to Dogs: Political Gang Violence and the State in the Western Segovias, Nicaragua, in the Time of Sandino, 1926-1934,” Journal of Latin American Studies 28, no. 2 (1996)
james a. robertson memorial prize
Peter M. Beattie, “The House, The Street, and the Barracks: Reform and Honorable Masculine Social Space in Brazil, 1864-1945,” HAHR 76, no. 3 (Aug. 1996)
tibesar prize
Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “Tamales or Timbales: Cuisine and the Formation of Mexican National Identity, 1821-1911,” The Americas 53, no. 2 (Oct. 1996)
Honorable Mention: Jeffrey Lesser, “(Re)creating Ethnicity: Middle Eastern Immigration to Brazil,” The Americas 53, no. 1 (July 1996)
lydia cabrera award
Jeffrey Voris, “The Development of Sixteenth-Century Cuban Society” Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, “Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874”
james r. scobie memorial award
Erica Windier, University of Miami
Session Reports
Business and Populist Alliances in Latin America: A Second Look
This panel consisted of three excellent papers, all of which fitted the announced theme very well. The first, by Barbara Weinstein (SUNY, Stony Brook), was entitled “The Politics of Social Peace: São Paulo Industrialists and Populism in Brazil, 1943-1964.” In a sophisticated and detailed study, Weinstein demonstrated that although the views of São Paulo industrialists on populism shifted over time, their reference point, their golden age, was the late 1930s and early 1940s, when an authoritarian regime created what they perceived to be social harmony. The industrialists were willing to appease the forces of labor with social programs but were unwilling to surrender any power over the shop floor. This pushed the labor sector increasingly into the political arena and, ironically, undermined the regime that the industrialists favored. Weinstein placed her study in a wider discussion of politics and populism in Brazil.
The second presentation, delivered by James P. Brennan (University of California, Riverside), was entitled “Industrialists and ‘Bolicheros’: Business and the Peronist Populist Alliance, 1946-1973.” Brennan examined the role of entrepreneurs in the Peronist coalition, emphasizing the activity of small businessmen and their organization, the Confederación General Económica (CGE). Brennan showed how the CGE evolved to become, in 1973 and 1974, a crucial part of the governing Peronist coalition, in which the longtime CGE leader José Gelbard served as economic minister. Brennan stressed that the CGE was not just composed of industrialists but of other business leaders as well.
Alex Saragoza (University of California, Berkeley) presented a final, insightful paper, “Business and the Politics of Essentialism: Populism and the Cultural Product of the Cardenista Regime, 1934-1940.” Saragoza’s approach differed from that of the previous two papers in that he focused on one particular industry. He examined how radio station owners responded to the state’s attempt under Lázaro Cárdenas to tighten its control over broadcasting. The station owners organized and then took advantage of Cárdenas’s political problems during the last years of his presidency to counter unwanted state initiatives. Saragoza pointed out that one outcome of this struggle was the consolidation of the Azcárraga family in the media industry.
Commentary by Joel Horowitz (Saint Bonaventure University) stressed that traditional discussions of populism have tended to reify entrepreneurs and reduce them to one-dimensional interest groups rather than complex groups of individuals who behave in diverse ways. He pointed out that ironically many such accounts have been presented by scholars who themselves had deplored the simplification of the working class by an earlier generation of scholars. Horowitz ended by noting that the session papers revealed a much more complex picture and pointed the direction for future scholarship.
joel horowitz
Camelot’s Best-Laid Plans: Perspectives on the Alliance for Progress in Latin America
This session comprised three papers, each of which was the result of considerable primary research. All presented original theses and perspectives on the Alliance for Progress.
Sara P. Stratton (York University, Toronto) began the session with a paper entitled “The Best Intentions: The Alliance for Progress as ‘Constructive Diplomacy.’” Stratton found something profoundly new in the struggle by serious reformers such as Chester Bowles to infuse the new policy with a concern for human rights and with strategies to restructure the distribution of wealth in Latin America. Although it continued to function in a Cold War context, the Alliance was more than a simple response to the Cuban Revolution.
Steven Schwartzberg (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) then presented “A Subversive Ambassador: John Bartlow Martin and the. Dominican Republic.” He discussed how through his close association with top military leaders, Martin, an unbalanced and inept Kennedy friend, unwittingly contributed to the overthrow of the elected Bosch administration. Martin emerges as a contradictory and emotional man with poor judgment.
Dee Anna Manning (Washington University) presented “Pandora’s Key: The Alliance for Progress in Chile.” She argued that the Chilean elite blamed the United States for land reform carried out during the Frei administration, and that this led to the elite’s subsequent support for nationalization of United States copper companies under Allende.
The presenters were followed by two commentators. William Walker (Ohio Wesleyan University) began by questioning the emphasis that had been placed on J. B. Martin’s character and his personal influence. Though he stated his appreciation for all the papers, Walker raised important historiographic questions about them. Timothy Harding (California State University, Los Angeles) followed by stressing both the Cold War context within which even the “left” Kennedy Alliance advisors argued and the strong military emphasis of the Alliance. He questioned the importance of the reform intent of the Alliance and doubted that by the time Frei was elected the United States had any interest in significant land reform in Chile. Harding added the CIA and the Pentagon to the list of United States institutions that led to Bosch’s overthrow. In conclusion, Harding compared the policies of the Alliance in the Dominican Republic to those carried out in other Latin American countries, thus minimizing the personal influence of Martin, the bizarre ambassador to this republic.
timothy harding
Changes and Continuities in Nineteenth-Century Argentina and Mexico
Given the early hour that it began, those who attended this panel were treated to a sunrise as the session got underway at 7:30 a.m. Nevertheless, the meeting was well attended. Three strong papers examined the extent to which nineteenth-century independence movements were a watershed in Latin American history. Jeffrey Shumway (University of Arizona) delivered the first paper, “The Revolutionary Family: Continuity and Change in Buenos Aires, 1810-1830.” Seeking to examine the degree to which the independence wars weakened traditional patriarchal authority, he analyzed disenso cases and newspapers for indications of a new postrevolutionary mentality. Shumway found that although there were still important links to the past, one of the results of independence was a change in the nature of patriarchal society and the concomitant creation of more social freedom for women and children.
The next paper, by Marie Francois (University of Arizona), was entitled “The View from the Neighborhood Pawnshop: What’s Old, What’s New, and What People Are Up To—Mexico City, 1800-1850.” Drawing on a wealth of documentation, Francois looked at the function of both the official monte de piedad and the more informal neighborhood pawning networks both before and after independence. She pointed out that each pawn circuit served a different clientele, with only the more prosperous availing themselves of the government-sponsored monte de piedad. Although legislation affecting pawnshops would eventually change, the clientele, the objects pawned, and the economic role of the pawnshop in the lives of the middling poor remained constant from the colonial to independence periods.
Although Oswaldo Barreneche (University of Arizona) was stranded in Buenos Aires, his paper on “Institutional Paths of State Formation: Changes and Continuities in Argentine Penal Practices (Buenos Aires, 1810-1830)” was read by Jeff Shumway. Within the larger context of the independence movement of 1810, Barreneche examined the degree to which two legal issues, the system of jail inspections and the question of military jurisdiction, were affected by the end of Spanish rule. Despite the fact that the postcolonial judiciary tried to limit the power of administrative officials to visit jails, older practices continued. The same was true in matters of civilian control of the military, as military commanders effectively maintained the colonial fuero militar by ignoring the demands of civilian judges that military and militia personnel accused of crimes be turned over to them.
Susan Socolow (Emory University) commented on the three papers, drawing up a hypothetical score card for each contribution to the change-versus-continuity debate. She pointed out that Barreneche and Francois seemed to fall on the continuity side of the continuum, while Shumway argued for a greater change in personal conduct resulting from independence. Several questions on the specific papers and a lively discussion followed.
susan migden socolow
Diasporic Dislocations: Jewish Migrants in Latin America
The session on “Diasporic Dislocations: Jewish Migrants in Latin America,” met on Friday morning, January 9, with some 20 persons in attendance. Organized by Judith Laikin Elkin (Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan), the panel offered a variety of perspectives on the subject. Sandra McGee Deutsch (University of Texas, El Paso), author of Counterevolution in Argentina, 1900-1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (Lincoln, 1986), provided the commentary.
Leo Spitzer (Dartmouth College) spoke first on “Refugeehood, Memory, and the Anguish of Transmission: The Bolivia Experience.” Himself a product of the worldwide migration he described, Professor Spitzer is well known for his work in comparative history. In his presentation Spitzer discussed how over time memory’s contours change in accordance with changes in the position of those who remember.
Ronald C. Newton (Simon Fraser University) spoke on “Italian-Jewish Refugees in Argentina, 1938-1945.” Newton’s books, German Buenos Aires, 1900-1933: Social Change and Cultural Crisis (Austin, 1977) and The “Nazi Menace” in Argentina, 1931-1947 (Stanford, 1992), have set a standard in the field. Rather than comparing the German with the Italian refugee stream, however, Newton reminded his listeners of the very different historical circumstances from which the latter emerged, which explains the return of Italians to their mother country after the war. The postwar repatriation of intellectuals also reflects the disparity in standards maintained at European and Argentine universities.
In his paper on “Immigration History or Diasporic Studies?” José Moya (University of California, Los Angeles) analyzed the meaning of some commonly used terms. Moya maintained that a certain competition for victimhood exists among historians and sociologists of migratory movements. While immigration history associates the migratory process with questions of identity and socioeconomic realities, diasporic studies, he claims, are restricted to poststructuralist text analysis. Its findings are therefore determined by prior ideological assumptions, leading to outcomes such as the linking of race issues in the United States with colonialism in the Third World.
All panelists are members of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association and have been preeminent in bridging the intellectual gulf between these two fields of study.
judith laikin elkin
Enriching Latin American History: A Look at Ways to Combine Social and Economic Perspectives
Organized by Barbara A. Tenenbaum (Hispanic Division, Library of Congress), this session was designed as a remedy to others, previously held at the AHA, in which economic and social historians of Latin America have disparaged each other’s work from the vantage point of separate panels. After a brief introduction by Barbara Tenenbaum, the session continued with a presentation by Nancy Van Deusen (Western Washington University), a social historian, on “Transculturation in the Early Modern Hispanic World: The Example of the Recogimiento: A Mystical Praxis, a Virtue, and a Practice on Enclosure among Women.” In her paper Van Deusen explained how the recogimiento, an institution that separated women from society for their own protection, was used in Mexico and Peru in the first centuries after conquest. Then Alan Dye (Department of Economics, Barnard College), commented on how the use of techniques and theories from economic history could have improved her paper. He paid particular attention to the use of statistics and the kinds of questions they generate.
Dye then delivered his own paper, “The Colono Contract and the Latifundium: Organizational Learning in Cuban Sugar, 1890-1929.” He argued that the contracts negotiated in the sugar industry during those four decades were not exploitative but instead reflected the best possible deal between mill owners and sugarcane growers. Van Deusen then suggested that it would be beneficial to take into account noneconomic concerns that might have affected growers in their negotiations with large foreign-owned mills.
Finally, John Coatsworth (Harvard University) stressed the revisionist nature of Dye’s work and how the tools of economic history can help scholars evaluate the validity of social complaints. Asunción Lavrin (Arizona State University) praised Van Deusen’s innovative analysis and emphasized the difficulties of finding precise information when colonial sources tend to be scarce. She added that the work of Ramón Guerra y Sánchez on the Cuban sugar industry, written in the 1940s, should be understood in context.
The session was highly successful. The speakers, by eschewing jargon and sarcasm, managed to convey to the 35 members of the audience the endless possibilities created through combining several different kinds of analyses. A suggestion was made to continue these dialogues and publish the results, in the hopes of bringing the practitioners of Latin American history together so that we can better understand the common past we all study.
barbara a. tenenbaum
Public Health and Political Power in Modern Mexico
Jeffrey M. Pilcher (The Citadel) began this session with a paper entitled "The Pure Food Debate and the Mexican Meat Industry, 1890-1920" that presented this debate in the context of contending discourses between Porfirian modernization, economic development, and public health. Foreign investment brought to Mexico a version of the Chicago meatpacking jungle described by Upton Sinclair and, along with it, a public debate that reflected the tension between traditional practices and centers of power on the one hand and rising concerns regarding public health and new responsibilities on the other.
Christina Rivera Garza (San Diego State University) then discussed “Mental Disorder, Social Order: The Insane and Their Psychiatrists Debate Gender and Class at the General Asylum, Mexico, 1910-1930.” The state, through medical practitioners, attempted to gain control over thought, defined the boundaries of acceptable gender and class behavior, and clashed with patients who challenged the modernization project with divergent interpretations of religion, medicine, and politics.
Finally, Glen David Kuecker (De Pauw University) extended the political analysis of public health debates in his presentation, “The Quarantine Debate of 1898: Yellow Fever, Sanitation, and the Discourse of Modernity in Porfirian Mexico.” A dichotomy developed between the central government and the states, exemplified by how the Mexican National Health Board responded to a yellow fever epidemic in Tampico by overturning a quarantine and imposing a vigorous new sanitation policy.
The audience, consisting of 14 faculty members from three continents, then began one of the most vigorous and engaging discussions with presenters that I have ever witnessed. The exploration of ideas continued for an hour beyond the time allotted for the session.
john mason hart
Social Aspects of Regional Political Identity in Brazil
An audience of 22 listened as Professors Judy Bieber (University of New Mexico), Roger Kittleson (Northwestern University), and Flendrik Kraay (University of Calgary) discussed political parties and regional identities in nineteenth-century Brazil.
In “Partisan Loyalty and Masculine Honor: The Construction of Political Identity in the Partisan Press of Late Imperial Minas Gerais,” Bieber argued that “party identity became intensely meaningful to members of the rural elite as it became grafted onto traditional notions of individual and corporate honor.” Bieber examined the regional press for examples of debates over party identity, and explored how party identity became increasingly associated with personal honor and identity. Her presentation included the forceful revisionist points that historians have unfairly downplayed the role and importance of party identity in the nineteenth century, and that this failure to recognize the importance of party identity has resulted from an excessive reliance on national level studies of parties and politics.
Professor Kittleson spoke on “A New Regime of Ideas in Porto Alegre, or, What Was at Stake in the Federalista Revolt of 1893-1895.” He began with the assertion that historians have unfairly ignored the role of ideology both in the rise of positivism in Rio Grande do Sul and in the Federalista Rebellion. The transfer of power from liberals to positivists represented a hegemonic shift from seigniorial liberalism to positivist ideology and political culture. But, according to Kittleson, this shift can be recognized only when analyzed in the context of shifting relations and projects between the ruling elite and “the povo.” Finally, when examining elite hegemonic projects we see that “the povo” constructed their own counterhegemonic response and discourse.
In his paper, “Between Brazil and Bahia: Celebrating Dois de Julho in Nineteenth-Century Salvador,” Hendrik Kraay adroitly identified the tension produced by the Dois de Julho holiday: the fact that it celebrated popular mobilization during independence, while national holidays emphasized the actions of the royal family and the centrality of the monarchy. Furthermore, the celebration of this holiday in Salvador highlighted a regional identity not in keeping with the monarchy’s national vision and emphasis. Based on impressive research, Kraay then explained that Dois de Julho always involved extensive popular celebrations that at times challenged social hierarchies in Salvador.
The discussant was John Charles Chasteen (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). He congratulated the presenters on the quality of their papers and for producing a collective work that closely followed the panel’s theme. Chasteen remarked on the benefits to be drawn from studies of political culture, but noted that the term “political culture” gains meaning only when its component parts—such as party ritual, the press, holidays, and the like—are examined. Questions from the audience followed the formal presentations.
todd a. diacon
Teaching the Americas as a Hemispheric Endeavor
In a session sponsored by the AHA Teaching Division and chaired by Leslie Offut, panelists James Hijiya, Maureen Murphy Nutting, and Hendrik Kraay offered a lively discussion on teaching the history of the Americas. Before an overflow audience jammed into a “smallish” conference room, the three panelists offered a variety of perspectives on the problems and satisfactions of teaching the sometimes unwieldy subject of the Americas. In his presentation, “The Shape of U.S. History: A Presentation Illustrated with Maps,” Hijiya (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth) focused on maps as a method of dealing with United States history. He examined the “nationalist” interpretation of United States history, which he maintained largely ignores the rest of the world, narrowing the boundaries of the subject matter through exclusion. By broadening the narrative to include the Spanish, French, British, and Amerindian contributions to the development of North America, both the map and the story become more inclusive. Hijiya’s suggestions for improvement include seeking textbooks for survey courses that consider all of the peoples of the Americas, as well as their contributions to its political, cultural, and economic development over the centuries.
In her presentation, “Teaching American History to Community College Students Today,” Maureen Nutting (North Seattle Community College) detailed some of the frustrations that community college teachers encounter. She pointed out that the number of students in the nation’s community college systems is rapidly increasing in a trend that shows no sign of abating. These students, however, are often those most unprepared for college-level work, and many need improvement in such areas as basic writing skills. There are, however, strategies that one can use to both increase basic skill levels and impart a serious study of history. Nutting detailed the use and success of small-group discussions, short writing assignments, computer labs (as a source of writing instruction), and discussions on primary source documentation. All of these approaches, which require incredible energy and remarkable organization, can be used in combination with stand-alone lectures on important topics to bring the unprepared and recalcitrant student more fully into contact with material covered in class. With community colleges still the fastest growing segment of higher education in the United States, those of us who teach in these systems must find ways to follow what Nutting is doing at North Seattle Community College.
Hendrik Kraay (University of Calgary) offered the final presentation, “The History of the Colonial Americas.” Kraay was as concerned as James Hijiya to avoid limiting the story of the colonial Americas to a simple history of developing nation-states, thus reducing the region’s rich colonial past to a mere prologue for the narrative of modern national history. Kraay surveyed some of the more recent attempts at building an inclusive and internally coherent analysis of the colonial era in the Americas, discussing the work of Philip Curtin, John Thornton, James Lockhart, and Patrick Manning, among others. He also considered the important issues of environmental changes wrought by the entrance of Europeans in the New World, as well as Indian-European relations over time, in terms of both labor and resistance to subjugation. He concluded by noting the lack of comprehensive textbooks about the Americas (Where is this generation’s Herbert Bolton or John Francis Bannon?) as well as the problem that all who teach the Americas face in telling students the story without falling back on the timeworn (yet organizationally appealing) crutch of nation-state development.
The session concluded with several detailed and interesting queries from the audience, many of whom obviously faced the same classroom difficulties broached by the panelists. Only the limitation imposed by the clock curtailed the lively discussion that followed.
craig hendricks
Committee Reports
Andean Studies
The Andean Studies Committee met on Thursday night, January 8, as many conference goers were still arriving and checking into their hotels. Despite the unfortunate hour, a respectable turnout came to hear a panel entitled “The Nineteenth Century Revisited: Todavía un siglo a la deriva?”
Cecilia Méndez (University of California, Santa Barbara) presented a paper officially entitled “Inventing a Past for the Iquichanos: On National and ‘Ethnic’ Identities in Nineteenth-Century Peru.” But she chose to preface her comments by giving the paper an alternative title, “Not-finding as a Finding.” Méndez began by recounting recent debates about the “Iquichanos,” an indigenous group implicated in the notorious killing of journalists at Uchuraccay during the height of Sendero Luminoso insurgency. Contemporary accounts assumed that the Iquichanos were an ethnic group with an identity that dated to preconquest or pre-Inca times, and Méndez recounted how she initially accepted this consensus as she searched for records of the Iquichanos in colonial and early postindependence documents. Much to her surprise, she found that no colonial documents mentioned the “Iquichanos,” who only entered the historical record between 1825 and 1828. It was then, during a monarchist rebellion against the newly established Peruvian republic, that the name “Iquichanos” began to be applied to certain insurgent villages in the Huanta region, whose residents eventually took this name for themselves. From this unexpected finding (or “not-finding”), Méndez drew several conclusions about the periodization and interpretation of Andean history. First, she showed how a term like “Iquichano” was not simply descriptive. When people in the region adopted or rejected this ethnic label, they did so for conscious, strategic, and political reasons, in part to identity with or to distance themselves from the contending sides in a civil uprising. Second, Méndez showed the inadequacy of assuming that ethnic identities in the Andes necessarily date to colonial or preconquest times. Her “not-finding” demonstrates that basic issues of ethnicity and local identification continued to be debated and resolved well into the nineteenth century and, probably, beyond.
Carmen McEvoy (University of the South) followed with a paper entitled “From the Utopian Republic to the Practical Republic: Intellectuals, Politics, and Cultural Identity in the Andean Region (1806–1871)” This wide-ranging survey of the history of republican ideas throughout the entire Andean region (from Venezuela to Chile) underscored both the contradictions of republicanism and its importance as a principle guiding the thinking of Andean intellectuals for nearly a century. The utopian republicanism of the independence era, characterized by radical visions of egalitarianism, first combined with unrealistic expectations of stability and progress before giving way to disillusion and conservatism in the 1830s and 1840s. It was in this context that intellectuals such as Andrés Bello came to envision a “republic of letters,” in which an elite would establish the basis of a republican order through the education and cultural refinement of the people. In the late 1840s and 1850s, new social actors (particularly artisans) appropriated elements of republican discourse, linking them to demands for political power. Ultimately, although their far more democratic vision of a “republic of work” did not prevail, their ideas were influential. They were taken up by intellectuals in the 1870s, and contributed in meaningful ways to the positivist vision of progress that triumphed in what McEvoy called the “practical republic,” exemplified by Peruvian civilismo, the Venezuelan guzmanato, and the Colombian regeneración.
Commentator Carlos Aguirre (University of Oregon) praised both papers as important contributions to a new wave of historiography that refuses to dismiss the nineteenth century as a “lost century” of instability, oligarchic rule, and economic dependency. He also raised a number of insightful questions, many of which were taken up by the audience in the spirited discussion that followed.
david s. parker
Caribe Studies
John Offner (emeritus, Shippensburg University) started off the meeting with a paper designed to provoke the other speakers, particularly the chair of Caribe Studies, Louis A. Pérez Jr. (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Offner presented a series of “what ifs,” that, in his opinion, could have prevented the United States invasion and occupation of Cuba. For example, he posed the question, “What if the United States had recognized the Cuban government in 1898?” and “What if Cubans had cooperated with the United States in the cease-fire?” Offner reflected on these questions and speculated about what might have happened, including that possibility that Cuba would have become self-governing and that there would have been no Platt Amendment.
Despite the gaundet thrown down by Offner, the other panelists held their fire during the next paper, on Puerto Rico, given by Luis Martínez-Fernández (Rutgers University). He began by pointing out that Puerto Ricans still suffer from an uncomfortable coexistence between the cultural influence of Spain and the United States. Martínez-Fernández took the audience through differing interpretations of 1898. He began with one from the late 1920s and early 1930s, a political and constitutional perspective that offered a positive view of the carta autónoma. This early approach reflected the push that between World War I and the Great Depression the coffee industry made for closer ties between Puerto Rico and Europe. Later historians stressed more of a socio-economic perspective, and tended to neglect the political side of the equation. Martínez-Fernández stressed that while Puerto Rican participation in the war was short, subsequently the island went through a period during which Spain was relegated to the past and the United States was considered to be the future.
Louis Pérez then reminded the panel of the impact that the impending end of the nineteeth century had in promoting the feeling that Spanish colonialism had outlived its usefulness. He responded to Offner’s challenge by noting that the United States had refused to serve as an ally or agency for Cuban independence, despite public opinion and genuine sympathy and support for that goal within the United States. He also noted that self-government is not the same as independence.
The question period was quite lively and included the participation of Barbara Tenenbaum (Hispanic Division, Library of Congress), who moderated the session, Lester Langley (University of Georgia), Francisco Scarano (University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Blanca G. Silvestrini (Universidad de Puerto Rico), among others.
barbara a. tenenbaum
Central American Studies
The Central America Committee met in the Sheraton Hotel at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, January 9. The committee nominated officers for the 1998-2000 biennium: David McCreery (Georgia State University) for chair, and Paul Dosal (University of South Florida) for secretary. A ballot with these nominations will be distributed with the next CLAH newsletter.
The committee then discussed the situation at the Archivo General de Centroamerica (AGCA) in Guatemala City, where Franz Binder, an Austrian researcher who for several years has been criticizing the AGCA administration, was recently arrested and charged with damaging the archive’s card catalog along with some documents. The chair read a letter from Franz Binder explaining his side of the controversy and another from Enrique Gordillo explaining the reasons for Binder’s arrest. After a discussion among those in attendance, there was a consensus that the committee should not take a formal position in the controversy, but that the chair should write to the director of the AGCA suggesting possible sources of funding to assist in repairing the damage allegedly done by Binder.
ralph lee woodward jr.
Chile-Río de la Plata Studies
The Chile-Río de la Plata Committee met at 5:00 P.M. on Saturday, January 10, with approximately 20 people in attendance. After the presentation of the incoming president, Anton Rosenthal (University of Kansas), and secretary, Barbara Ganson (Florida Atlantic University), committee members were asked to consider nominating one of their number to serve as contact person with the H-LATAM board.
The meeting then turned to the academic presentations. This year’s session topic was “Identity and Conflict on the Platine Periphery: Alternative Roads to Nationhood in Paraguay and Uruguay.” There were two presenters.
First, Jerry W. Cooney (emeritus, University of Louisville) read a paper entitled “The Last Bandeira: The Struggle for Paraguay’s Eastern Marches, 1752-1777.” He described the settlement and economic development of the Curuguaty-Ygatymi region of northeastern Paraguay during the mid-nineteenth century. The inhabitants of that area, though nominally Paraguayans who owed allegiance to Spain, had in fact a more fluid identity relative to both Asunción and to neighboring Portuguese Brazil, where they avidly traded. The Paraguayans of the Curuguaty-Ygatymi region ignored the various restrictions that their own governor-intendant had enacted to keep them within the Spanish sphere of influence. Thus, despite the arguments of Efraim Cardozo and other Paraguayan historians, who ascribed a “protonationalist” sympathy to these same settlers, they in fact defined themselves principally in local and regional terms. Cooney stressed that cases such as that of the Curuguaty-Ygatymi region suggest the need for further studies of the origins of Latin American nationalism.
Continuing in a similar vein was Juan Manuel Casal (Universidad de la República del Uruguay), who presented “Unification and Early Professionalism in the Uruguayan Army: Militarism and the Invention of Uruguayan Nationhood.” In Uruguay, Casal argued, the road toward a common sense of national identity was fraught with difficulties. Several alliances with Argentine political factions and the ever-present threat of Brazilian expansionism created the conditions that drove Orientales toward one of these two countries; thus a separate and specifically Uruguayan national identity had to be created. This task ultimately fell to the military regimes of the 1870s and 1880s, which inherited Montevideo’s political agenda against rural “caudillismo” and transformed it into a program for the propagation of new national myths. The professionalization of the military and the eventual acceptance of these myths together influenced the forging of a modern state under Batlle.
Stephen Bell (McGill University) served as commentator, praising both papers and making suggestions for further research. In particular, he called for closer study of the links between militarism and the changing rural economy in nineteenth-century Uruguay. He emphasized the need for more active collaboration between historians and historical geographers. Bell also echoed the message of the two presenters in observing that although we organize the study of Latin American history on the basis of national boundaries, the nation is not always the most appropriate geographical scale for historical research.
Several thoughtful questions from the audience followed. The meeting was adjourned at 7:00 p.m.
thomas whigham
Conference on Latin American History Teaching Committee
The CLAH Teaching Committee met in Seattle to discuss current issues and future plans. Avi Chomsky (Salem State College) was introduced as the new chair of the Teaching Committee. The committee was enthusiastic about the CLAH proposals to formalize its relationship with H-LATAM and to update the CLAH website and make it more user-friendly. Dale Graden (University of Idaho) will be our technology liaison, and through the spring and summer we hope to work on a Teaching Committee link for the website. The committee will continue to publish a regular column on teaching in the CLAH Newsletter; articles on “Teaching Gender in Latin American History” and “A Comparative Approach to the Teaching of African American Studies” are forthcoming. The Teaching Committee is also working on plans to have a speaker (or speakers) at our meeting at the 1999 AHA, and of possibly taking leadership of the project to produce a new edition of the wonderful Lombardi and Lombardi teaching atlas. We would love to hear from CLAH members interested in any of the above areas.
avi chomsky
International Scholarly Relations
David Sartorius (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) shared his recent experiences as one of several historians working in the provincial archive of Cienfuegos. He noted that the continuing diversification of Cuban historiography calls for increased attention to regional specificity, especially in terms of some of the island’s most compelling historical narratives: colonial development, slavery, the North American presence, independence, the republic, and the revolution. Sartorius stated that the collection in Cienfuegos, especially useful for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has allowed him to understand the local context of events that have acquired broader historical significance. Extensive documentation from local sugar plantations, together with records from the national libraries and archives in Cuba and the United States, form the core of his current research on slave subsistence and the cultivation of provision grounds. In addition, the Cienfuegos archive’s holdings on the region’s prominent residents, the liberation army, and veterans organizations have interested other Cuban, North American, and European scholars, many of whom presented their research at a conference held at the archive in March 1998. The institution serves not only as a depository for documents but also as the cornerstone of the local intellectual community.
david sartorius
Mexican Studies
Susan Deans-Smith (University of Texas, Austin), the committee chair, convened the meeting in which an enthusiastic audience (sustained by Seattle’s endless supply of coffee) was treated to four provocative presentations in the session titled “Trends and Transformations in Mexican History II. Crossing Disciplines: Art, Ritual, and Identities in Mexico.” This interdisciplinary panel brought together four scholars (two historians, one art historian, and one historian of music) who have either recently completed or are about to complete their dissertations.
Eduardo Douglas (University of Texas, Austin) presented “Multiple Views: History, Land, and Pictorial Representation in Early Colonial Texcoco.” Douglas’s main objective was to critically examine indigenous maps and painters in colonial Texcoco and to propose a contextualization of such maps within the broader economic and social pale of land tenure. Douglas raised a number of complex questions. He reflected on whether it is possible to isolate and measure nonartistic processes in the stylistic choices of indigenous painters and their patrons. Does the tlacuilo (scribe) compromise a community’s Indianness by turning to European art, or could European style be employed to express native content? Douglas concluded that the idea that pictorial style represents a form of transparent cultural essence may distort any sense of a prehispanic past and Indian present and the varied ways in which colonial indigenous painters gave it form and meaning. By tracing the distribution and variety in land grant maps over time and space, Douglas argued that native patrons and painters self-consciously articulated a dynamic, historically constituted indigenous identity and claimed lands and rights on the basis of this identity.
Steven Flinchpaugh (Emory University) discussed his doctoral research in a paper entitled “Ritual and Assertion of Local Identity in Bourbon Mexico: The Viceregal Entrada, 1766-1821.” Arguing that the viceregal entrada provided something of a metaphor for crown reforms and their limitations, Flinchpaugh traced the shift from sumptuous expenditure on viceregal entradas under the Habsburgs to Bourbon attempts to curtail and control such expenditures. Success in reducing the levels of expenditure on viceregal entradas proved to be temporary. Although the period between 1722 and 1766 witnessed reductions, the decades from the 1760s to the 1790s witnessed a return to lavish, expensive entradas. Explanations for such a reversal focused on the entradas as a source of local pride, as well as an assertion of identity and patronage. The urban ceremonial cycle not only facilitated local income redistribution to merchants, artisans, palace retainers, and officeholders, but it also permitted a broader challenge to the threat that Bourbon absolutism posed to the preexisting system of colonial consensus. Flinchpaugh also suggested that the efforts of the Mexico City cabildo to protest against reductions in expenditures on viceregal entradas demonstrates notions of political order and honor quite distinct from those promoted by the Bourbons.
Nora Jaffary (Columbia University) presented aspects of her current research in a paper entitled “Ecstasy, Possession, and Illness: Constructions of Deviancy and Orthodoxy in the Mexican Inquisition.” In a fascinating analysis of “false” mystics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries based on their trial records, Jaffary focused on trying to understand the criteria used by the Mexican Inquisition to distinguish two types of false mystics—ilusos and alumbrados—from those women and men the Church accepted as bona fide visionaries. With a specific focus on women, Jaffary concluded that the Court’s judgement had very little to do with evaluations of mystical phenomena themselves, and much more to do with assessments of the class and educational status of the people who claimed to have experienced such mystical phenomena. The Inquisition condemned beatas and women whom they believed shunned the Christian virtues (especially the virtue of humility) or who pushed the boundaries of the feminized confines of traditional mysticism by claiming interpretive or intellectual power over the meaning of their mystical experiences. Finally, Jaffary argued that the Inquisition convicted women who produced theological pronouncements (written or verbal). In so doing, the women stepped outside of the mystical domain entirely and entered into the masculine and clerical realms of theology and dogma. As such, they transgressed against the idealized notions of acceptable and appropriate roles for female religious in colonial Mexico.
In his paper, “Music and Ceremony in Honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and the Meaning of Rituals in Colonial Mexico (1550-1650),” Grayson Wagstaff (University of Alabama) explored how music and ritual in honor of Guadalupe emerged and developed in the later sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. The presentation was accompanied by musical excerpts. Wagstaff explored early devotion to Guadalupe through a creative analysis of surviving music by composers active in Mexico in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although Wagstaff stressed the speculative nature of his argument, one hypothesis he suggested focused on the connection between the Salve, an ancient Marian devotion that could be performed on any day of the year, and the Litany, an act that explicitly stated the power of the image as intercessor. While Wagstaff found no evidence for this connection among sixteenth-century composers, such a connection is suggested in the work of one of the most important composers of early seventeenth-century Mexico, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla and his setting of Felix Namque. Wagstaff speculated that the fact that a busy chapel master in Puebla, such as Padilla, chose to make such large-scale settings of items for devotions tied to the feast of the Nativity of Mary suggests that this celebration was acquiring a powerful following. Finally, Wagstaff suggested that these works must be placed in the context of a shift away from village-centered religion, nurtured by Franciscan and other Mendicant control, to a more “national” secular church.
The papers were followed by a lively discussion period, during which the presenters fielded a variety of questions from the audience, the chair, and each other.
SUSAN DEANS-SMITH
Population and Quantitative History
Chair Donald Stevens (Drexel University) opened the session with a reminder that he was resigning effective at the end of the meeting. He also announced that CLAH president Lyman Johnson (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), after consultation with the committee, had named Stephen Haber (Stanford University) as the committee’s new chair. In other developments, Robert McCaa (University of Minnesota) has completed the latest issue of The Latin American Population History Bulletin (fall 1997, no. 27). In addition to being available in a printed version, the LAPHB is now posted on McCaa’s website (http://www/hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/laphb/), and it looks spectacular. The committee is also fortunate to have Eugenio Piñero (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire) as new editor of the Latin American Economic History Newsletter, which has been dormant since Richard Garner retired. All those interested in helping revive the LAEHN are invited to write Pinero at [email protected].
The scholarly portion of the program consisted of the presentation and discussion of a paper by Rodney Anderson (Florida State University), “If All the World Were Guadalajara: Artisans, Migration, and the Problem of Culture,” which, along with its accompanying tables, was sent to the committee before the meeting. (At nearly 36 single-spaced pages, with over 60 additional pages of tables, the paper can only be given the briefest of summaries here.) Anderson’s study is based on his analysis of the 1821 and 1822 censuses of Guadalajara. To the classic debate on race and class, Anderson has added the theme of immigration, and concluded that whether an individual had moved from place of birth or last residence was more important than race, and sometimes even overwhelmed gender. In addition, Anderson concluded that Sherburne Cook and Eric Van Young (University of California, San Diego) were not correct in holding that immigrants came from nearby villages.
Anderson was not only generous with his words and tables, he also took the unprecedented and heroic step of sending his data to commentator Robert McCaa. In a hi-tech commentary using computer-generated slides to illustrate his points, McCaa said that cross-tabulations alone were not sufficient to determine the interaction of three or more categorical variables. Multivariate analysis was appropriate to determine which model fit best and to assess the effects of variables and parameters. McCaa demonstrated a log-linear analysis of the interactions between calidad, occupation, and barrio using some of Anderson’s 1821 data from Guadalajara. The session concluded with audience participation in commentaries, questions, and discussion.
donald f. stevens
