vistasteresa lozano long institute of latin american studies . the university of texas at austin . 2012

From the Director

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the inaugural edition of

Vistas, our annual newsletter for alumni

and other supporters of LLILAS. Here

you’ll find profiles of former classmates,

beloved professors, and current students

who are continuing the great tradition of

Latin American Studies at the University

of Texas at Austin, forging new paths for

innovation and leadership in our hemisphere. In each issue we’ll also feature an

interview with an author, visiting professor, or others who contribute to the stimu-

lating learning environment at LLILAS. This first issue includes conversations

with Austin-based alumnus Andrew Wheat, award-winning Professor of History

Jonathan Brown, MA student Dalila Torres of Brazil, and distinguished Mexican

art historian Jaime Cuadriello, author of The Glories of the Republic of Tlaxcala,

recently published by LLILAS and the University of Texas Press.

We hope that you like what you see and that you’ll continue to stay connected

with the institute, or contact us if you’ve fallen out of touch. We want to hear from

you and learn about your experiences since graduating from LLILAS.

Saludos cordiales,

DirectorTeresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection

2011-2012 llilas Advisory Council

Miguel Alemán

Alonso Ancira

William M. Arnold

Viviana Treviño Barton

The Honorable Antonio Benjamin

Alejandro C. Giannotti

Pamela M. Giblin

Chris G. Jordan

Elio E. King

Miguel Krigsner

Myra L. Leo

Joe R. Long

Teresa Lozano Long

Tara G. McCown

Rubens Ometto Silveira Mello

Héctor E. Morales

Jane E. Schlansker

Martha E. Smiley

Darryl W. Traweek

David Wells

Vistas EditorGail Sanders

g.sanders@austin.utexas.edu512.232.2423

www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/llilas

What brought you to LLiLAS?My entrée into Latin American culture was Chicago’s La Majada Mexican res-taurant. My ravaged teenage brain won-dered, “What does la majada mean?” The dictionary translated the name as “sheep pen; manure, dung.” It opened up a linguistic New World, even as it turned me against La Majada’s steaming refried beans. After college I visited the four-year-old Sandinista Revolution. Mana-gua’s literacy campaign was impressive but it was darker in Contra territory near Costa Rica. There the Sandinistas con-scripted 16-year-olds and concentrated campesinos into squalid villages overseen by the military. Going home overland, I visited model villages in the Guatemalan highlands. The neat little houses there lined surveillance-friendly streets with Orwellian names like “La Avenida del Nuevo Amanecer.”

What are your most memorable LLiLAS experiences?I did a joint regional planning degree in the late 1980s, and studied development with Patricia Wilson, government with Henry Dietz, and discussed counterin-surgency in a Rick Adams class. Diversity was the program’s strongest asset. We had people from China, Pakistan, and all the Americas—even such exotic locales as Canada and Alabama. Departmental gos-sip said that I was inordinately receptive

andrew Wheattexans for Public JusticeLLiLAS mA, 1991

to prospective student Julia Bower. After LLILAS she became a midwife, my wife, and my life, roughly in that order.

What are you doing in your professional life?In 1997 I joined a colleague who started an Austin nonprofit. Texans for Public Justice tracks the special-interest political money that makes Texas one of the more affluent Banana Republics. TPJ is best known for filing a 2003 criminal complaint that ended House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s career and led to his conviction

for criminal money laundering. When the complaint was hatched, my family was watching our youngest son wage a battle for his life in a California hospital. My homebirth midwife, in an existen-tial irony, had to deliver both our boys pre-term—in hospitals. Nine years later, Nicholas has left artificial life supports far behind (and the aptly named DeLay is still appealing his conviction).

below: Andrew Wheat with wife, Julia, and sons Micah (left) and Nicholas (right).

Please tell us a little about yourself: where you’re from, where you studied before coming to Ut, anything else you’d like us to know.My name is Dalila Torres. I am from Imperatriz, Maranhão, one of the poor-est states in Brazil, and spent part of my childhood in Brasilia. In 2010, I was accepted into the Ford Foundation’s International Fellowship Program, which provides opportunities for students who lack access to educational resources in elementary and high school to acquire university degrees abroad. UT-Austin offered me the chance to do an MA in Latin American Studies.

how did you hear about LLiLAS?Several of my professors in Brazil told me that the Benson Latin American Collection has more materials on our country than most universities in Brazil. I got very excited—my first time studying abroad and at one of the best programs of its kind.

What are you currently studying?My research is on institutional racism. I wanted to come to UT to study race because in Brazil I didn’t have the opportunity. Although the Universidade de Brasília has imple-mented a quota system for blacks, there is no institutional plan to implement courses about race. This pattern is changing because of a recent law that requires the teaching of black and indigenous history and culture in schools, but I took only one course on the topic there.

What has your experience as an international student been like?It was hard in the beginning to adapt to the American lifestyle. There is a lot of pres-sure in graduate school, especially when you receive a fellowship and have to maintain it with good grades. I had difficulties with language, food, cold weather, and making friends. But now I am more integrated into the department and the university. I have received great help from Prof. Henry Dietz, my graduate adviser, and from Kimberly Terry, graduate coordinator at LLILAS. I confess I came with worries, mainly because Texas is known as a racist place. But I have not had any problems or experienced any fear or lack of respect in the university environment.

What do you plan to do with your Latin American Studies degree?Before coming to LLILAS I was studying to become a diplomat in Brazil. However, because of my experience here I have changed my mind and am considering an aca-demic career or working in a nonprofit organization that deals with problems in Latin America. I now have a wider vision and interpretation of the world. I hope to be accepted into a PhD program in political science later this year.

mA candidateLLiLAS

Here at LLILAS, I have the

chance to really think through

my research, discuss it with

my peers, and look for a

professor who matches my

interests. I like this freedom

to choose, because we are here

for learning, not applying

what we already know.

—DALiLA torreS

Dalila Torres

Please describe your background and how you became interested in Latin America.I became interested in Latin America as an undergraduate journalism major at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. When I was an ROTC trainee, the Army made me a deal: give Uncle Sam three years of service, and the Army would grant me two years beforehand to study for the master’s degree. I obtained a plum assignment for the first part of my obliga-tory service—the Panama Canal Zone—arriving there four months after the golpe de estado that put General Omar Torrijos into power. My best history lesson came on an unforgettable day when I was the duty officer at the Army Operations Center. General Torrijos had traveled to Mexico for the horse race known as the Carrera de las Américas. His horse lost and, before he could return home, two majors of the Guardia Nacional (GN) deposed him in a military rebellion. Helped by a young captain named Manuel Noriega, Torrijos flew in at night to the Panamanian city of David. From there he led a caravan down the Pan American Highway as one garri-son after another pronounced for Torrijos. Just as the future negotiator of the U.S.-Panamanian treaty was crossing the canal to enter the capital city, the two coup plot-ters fled into the Canal Zone.

What are you currently working on?I am researching an impossibly ambitious project on “Secret War: Cuba, the United States, and the Struggle for Latin Amer-ica.” In it, I have been able to discover in the presidential libraries of Eisenhower,

Kennedy, and Johnson the linkages between Fidel’s revolution and the guer-rilla movements and military golpes in South America.

What role has the Benson collection played in your research and teaching?Each one of my publications has benefited from the Benson Collection. It contains enough materials for hundreds, nay thou-sands, of original research projects. It is where many of my students undertake their first research in Latin American his-tory. However, every great dissertation and book still requires additional research in Latin American archives and, for some of us, in U.S. repositories. My current research on “Secret War” necessitated reading declassified national security doc-uments in presidential archives and in the National Archives.

is there anything else you’d like to add?Teaching cadets as a visiting professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy [where Brown is teaching through spring 2012] is akin to graduate instruction at UT Austin. The classes are small. I know all the students by name. As at UT, this former journal-ism major spends a great deal of time teaching them to write. There is no need for lectures. Instead, we have interesting discussions comparing Latin America to the historical development of the United States. We ponder how, for 50+ years, Fidel Castro survived the hostility of the most powerful nation on earth. He has outlasted every president since Dwight D. Eisen-hower. There must be something to Max Weber’s ideas about charisma.

Professor of history University of texas at Austin

J o n a t h a n B r o w n

can you tell us about your background?

I’ve always had an ability to capture visual languages and “read” images as text, grounded in the inevitable religious experiences of a boy from a conservative Catholic family in Mexico. I have worked for three decades in the world of museums and began as a researcher at UNAM (the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) in 1990. The direct contact with works of art has allowed me to continually articulate and reinterpret the meanings and uses of colonial images.

What are your areas of research?

I’ve developed my life as a researcher and teacher in four areas of interest: regional his-tory, devotional images, political iconography, and the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. I’ve always been interested in understanding the ever-changing meanings and intentions of images and above all their context in social practices. Of course, curat-ing exhibitions has been one of the most enriching experiences, including work on Los Pinceles de la Historia (2000–2003) and El Éxodo Mexicano: Los héroes en la mira del arte (2010). In these projects, we have debated as a team the power of images and their role in the colonial and national imagination of Mexico.

can you describe for our readers The Glories of the Republic of Tlaxcala, your book recently published with LLiLAS and the University of texas Press?

The book on Tlaxcala and its “glories” is the story of a small-town priest and the histor-ical-religious paintings he came to own, defending through them his peculiar notion of territoriality and Tlaxcaltecan identity. It’s also an attempt to come to terms with the complexity of indigenous voices in the face of colonial displacement, and to understand their capacity for initiative and effectiveness, beyond passivity or mere resistance.

Jaime CuadrielloLLiLAS Author and Art historian at the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de méxico

below left: Chingo Bling with CMAS Associate Director Nicole Guidotti-Hernández (left) and Director Domino Perez (right). below right: LLILAS and CMAS students with Eva Longoria and LLILAS Associate Director Juliet Hooker (right).

The 2012 Lozano Long ConferenCe - a LL ILaS/CMaS CoLLaboraTIon

Central americans and the Latino/a Landscapenew Configurations of Latina/o america

February 22–25, 2012

This year’s conference explored the increas-

ingly important role of Central Americans in

the cultural and political landscape of the U.S.

Opening with an exhibition of photographs by

artist Muriel Hasbun about the 1980s civil war

in El Salvador, the conference included inspiring

keynote addresses by California State Assembly-

woman Norma Torres, rapper Chingo Bling,

and actress and philanthropist Eva Longoria.Eva Longoria Norma Torres

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L L I L A STereSa Lozano Long InSTITuTe of LaTIn aMerICan STudIeS1 Universit y Station • D0800 • SRH 1 .310Austin, Texas 78712

the Latin American Studies Scholarship in honor of Anne Dibble

provides vital financial support for graduate

students majoring in Latin American

Studies at UT Austin. A $2,000 scholar-

ship will be awarded annually beginning

in 2013. We invite you to honor Anne’s

enduring impact on LLILAS by contributing

to her Scholarship today. To make a gift, please contact

Gail Sanders at <g.sanders@austin.utexas.edu> or 512.232.2423.

comiNg thiS FALL

Join us for a special concert by

mArthA SeNN

Colombia’s most

distinguished opera singer.

Ms. Senn will perform classical songs

from Spanish America and Brazil

and follow with a Q&A session

with the audience.

Join us for the inaugural llilas alumni reunion, may 18, 2012

w w w . u t e x a s . e d u / c o l a / i n s t s / l l i l a s

t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f t e x a s a t a u s t i n