Will Nationalism Be Bilingual?

Carlos Monsiváis on Contemporary MexicoCarlos Monsiváis, intellectual, chronicler, journalist, critic, writer, and reader,

has been for many years an acute scalpel that dissects the Mexican reality —and a strong voice that denounces its many injustices. The author of The Ritualof Chaos and Mexican Postcards, Monsiváis is among Mexico’s most prolific andinfluential writers. Outspoken and opinionated, he never forgets his ironic twist— a talent necessary to digest contemporary Mexico. In April, he visited Berke-ley and shared his insights in a public presentation sponsored by the Center forLatin American Studies (CLAS), the Dean of the College of Letters and Science,and the Spanish and Portuguese Department.

Monsiváis’ career has been astonishing not only because of the enormousnumber of books and articles he has published, or the number of prizes andrecognitions he has garnered, but because of his persistent efforts to analyze themost contemporary events in Mexican society. Nothing escapes his critical eye.Television shows and radio programs concerning the Mexican reality never forgetto ask Monsiváis’ opinion. His words have tremendous weight in helping to answerthe questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we doing here?

As Prof. Harley Shaiken reminded the audience during Monsiváis’ presenta-tion at Alumni House, Monsiváis is deeply committed to political change andsocial justice; it has been said that he “writes to keep the hope of change alive.”His work eschews the elitism which often characterizes cultural essayists. ForMonsiváis, professional wrestling, soccer games, street jargon, and taco stands are

Continued on page 4

Carlos Monsiváisdiscusses Mexicannationalism at UC

Berkeley’s Alumni House

Fall 1999

University of California, Berkeley

Center for Latin American Studies

2 CLAS

Letter from the Chair

The Center for LatinAmerican StudiesNewsletter is publishedthree times a year bythe Center for LatinAmerican Studies,International and AreaStudies, The Universityof California, 2334Bowditch Street,Berkeley, CA 94720-2312.

ChairHarley Shaiken

Vice ChairMaría Massolo

EditorAngelina SnodgrassGodoy

Contributing EditorMarny Requa

Design and LayoutIsaac Mankita

Design ConsultantNigel French

PhotographyCecilia ColladosMargaret LambJames LeragerMelissa Stevens-Briceño

Contributing WritersCecilia ColladosJavier A. CousoZachary ElkinsClara IrazábalJuan Ryusuke IshikawaMisha KleinBernard NietschmannIngrid Perry-HoutsMarny RequaLeah Rosenbloom

Center StaffMark EdstromMargaret LambIsaac MankitaDio RamosMelissa Stevens-BriceñoAdolfo Ventura

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Carlos Monsiváis on Mexico ...................................................... 1Brazil’s Secretary of State for Human Rights .............................. 3Costa Rica’s President Visits Campus......................................... 5Charting Costa Rica’s Beaches.................................................. 6Chile’s Presidential Elections ................................................... 9Labor Leaders on the Border .................................................. 12Candace Slater: Visions of Amazonia ....................................... 16Regional Planning Working Group ........................................... 18

Inside CLAS

At the Center for Latin American Studies, ourwork is tremendously enriched by the vibrant

community of Latin Americanists at UC Berkeley.This issue of our newsletter provides a glimpse ofthat vitality through its coverage of our program,outreach, working groups, and faculty research.

The many activities featured in these pagesillustrate the considerable geographic and thematicdiversity of our program. Recent contributionsinclude the incisive cultural commentary of CarlosMonsiváis and the insightful political analysis ofDavid Fleischer. Within this broad range, the talkby José Gregori, Brazil’s Secretary of State forHuman Rights, underscores a broader set ofprograms and research on human rights at UCBerkeley. We feature an article on the upcomingelections in Chile not simply because their outcomeis important for that country, but also becauseseveral of our recent speakers and Visiting Scholarshave played central roles in the Lagos campaign.Finally, the conversation with Costa Rican PresidentMiguel Angel Rodríguez, a Berkeley alumnus,emphasized key issues for that country and itsfuture development strategies.

In this issue, we highlight the activities of one ofour working groups, which, under the leadership ofProfessor Manuel Castells, organized a recentconference that grappled with a number of urgentenvironmental and planning issues. This year, we

also welcome two new working groups whoseactivities we look forward to following in futureissues: one on politics and poetry, organized byProfessor Francine Masiello, and the other oncolonial society and culture in Mexico, organized byProfessor William B. Taylor and Visiting ScholarAmos Megged.

We also feature articles about the current researchof Professors Bernard Nietschmann and CandaceSlater. The research locations vary dramatically, fromthe beaches of Costa Rica to the rain forests ofAmazonia, but both provide a compelling look attheir recent work. We also report on CLAS’ participa-tion in a trip to Tijuana by the national staff of theInternational Association of Machinists.

We are looking forward to an engaging yearahead, in which we plan to focus on two broadthemes. First, through our research and activities, weplan to accompany and explore the ongoing processof democratization in Latin America, as it unfoldsthrough elections in such countries as Chile,Argentina, Guatemala, and Mexico. Second, we willanalyze the evolving relations between Mexico andthe United States by conceptualizing them as“Overlapping Societies.”

We are especially proud of our website, whichcontains summaries of our program, useful links, artexhibits, and electronic versions of past newslettersand publications. We hope you will visit us there.

—Harley Shaiken

3FALL 1999

Recent years have seen a revision of the concept ofhuman rights in response to social and political

transformations on a global scale, and few havewitnessed these changes more closely than JoséGregori, Brazil’s Secretary of State for Human Rights.Secretary Gregori visited Berkeley on May 3 to sharehis reflections on the status of human rights in Braziland new developments in the field. His presentationattracted a wide audience of students, faculty, andcommunity members and prompted a lively discus-sion about the redefinition of human rights.

Secretary Gregori offered an overview of thedevelopment of the Ministry which he heads. Aspart of its transition from military rule, Brazil tookimportant steps to prioritize human rights andadhere to the relevant international treaties andcovenants. In 1995, the National Program forHuman Rights was created, and eventually ex-panded to a national-level secretariat of HumanRights. Most recently, in January of this year, thesecretariat was elevated to the status of Ministry.

Secretary Gregori emphasized the interactive wayin which the program was designed and imple-mented, with extensive input and participation fromcivil society and non-governmental organizations.Secretary Gregori himself has a long history of workwith Brazilian NGOs, having fought tirelesslyagainst torture and repression during the period ofmilitary rule. More recently, he has served as theprincipal architect of the government’s currenthuman rights policy. In recognition of his extraordi-nary achievements, he was honored with the UnitedNations Human Rights Award on the occasion ofthe 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of HumanRights in 1998.

Secretary Gregori explained that Brazil’s humanrights program takes a pragmatic approach, focusingon “intense needs,” and seeking results in the formof political and social changes. He discussed itsmany aims, including the prevention of policebrutality; streamlining the judicial process; disman-tling impunity, especially in the more remote regionsof the country; the reduction of discriminationagainst the more vulnerable segments of the popula-tion (in particular, women, children, indigenouspeople, homosexuals, and the disabled); and thethorough investigation of all denouncements thatreach the Ministry.

Within Brazil, the first priority of the humanrights program has been to publicize the idea of

human rights among the population. One majorobstacle has been a public perception that humanrights protect the rights of criminals over those ofvictims or other citizens. The National Program forHuman Rights has worked to dispel this myth, andto educate the population on the incorporation ofhuman rights at a personal level. Changing indi-vidual conduct requires changing people’s percep-tion of human rights and reaching intimate aspectsof their lives. Secretary Gregori explained that thiskind of change makes the work of his Ministry verydifferent from that of most other Ministries;building roads and bridges, for example, does notinvolve changing the way citizens think. Thechallenge of transforming the program from theoryinto practice is not a simple or linear task, butrequires a dialectic process with alternating advancesand setbacks.

The Secretary spoke eloquently of the need for atruly cooperative effort among nations in theinternational human rights movement. All countriesare violators of human rights, he insisted, andtherefore we need a constructive dialogue on humanrights matters, rather than attempts by one countryto dictate practices in another. He explained that thepurpose of his visit to the United States and toBerkeley was far more than a question of publicity,

Brazilian Minister Calls forGlobalization of Human Rights

Continued on page 8

Secretary Gregori.Photo by JamesLerager

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Monsiváis on MexicoContinued from page 1

all an integral part of Mexico’s cultural map. Withimaginative journeys through the classics of Mexi-can cinema, the street vendors of Mexico City, andthe religious practices in rural pueblos, Monsiváisopens up and explores Mexican culture withfascinating insight.

In April 1999, Monsiváis spent a week inBerkeley, giving a series of private and publicpresentations, and interacting with faculty andstudents. His April 19 talk entitled “Will National-ism Be Bilingual?” explored the issue of nationalismin Mexican society. An excerpt of it is provided here.

—Juan Ryusuke Ishikawa

What are the cultural strategies of la gente, thepeople, in the age of globalization? In the era

of neoliberal fundamentalism, of the total oblitera-tion of traditions, the worship of newness, and ofthe inimitable progress? As far as I can see, some ofthe cultural strategies depend on adaptability; some,on imitation; some, on assimilation. I’ll give yousome examples, perhaps extremely anecdotal.

Six or seven years ago, in a small town nearVeracruz, a group of people came to see the mayorand the local priest. “Mister Mayor, Señor Cura,”they said, “a few months from now we’ll have HolyWeek, and in the enactments of Holy Friday, wedon’t want the Roman Legionnaires anymore. Wedon’t relate to them. They are meaningless to us.Instead, we prefer the new symbols of evil surround-ing our lord, and flogging and spitting on him,symbols like Darth Vader of Star Wars, FreddyKrueger from Nightmare on Elm Street, theGoonies, and so forth and so on.” The mayor andthe priest tried to persuade them of the error…“That would be a historical mistake, a blasphemy, atheological monstrosity.” “We don’t care,” theyanswered. “We need symbols we can relate to, andalso, we need some kind of contemporary excite-ment.” Finally, the mayor, the priest, and the people

found a solution, a truce. After the usual staging ofla pasión, they would dramatize Christ’s death withthe characters from the movies surrounding thecross, an alternative pasión.

… In the popular milieu, every day we observethe same landscape: traditions are vanishing, andtraditions refuse to die. Take the days of the dead,the first two days in November. By now, they blendwith Halloween. So we can perfectly declare thatHalloween belongs by now to the Mexican tradi-tions. Or take for instance the new attitudes inindian women. Of course, in the great festivities theystill wear the dresses and proudly exhibit themselvesto cameras and video recorders, but the rest of theyear they act in new ways. And the fashion in theirattitudes, many of them are pro-choice, and theyrefuse to see themselves anymore as “typical” indianwomen. For instance, they change the names of theirchildren. Not María, Guadalupe, Regina, or Petraany more, but instead Marilyn, Pamela, and so on.And when some people ask them why they put thosenames to their children they say, “We are fed up ofbeing called María.” In Oaxaca, for instance, someof the women declare, “We prefer jeans. It’s apractical outfit, and we need it. Sure, we havetraditions, but once a year.”

On the whole, migration is the changing force.People travel, work in California, Texas, Illinois, tryto understand technology, and simply adore thegadgets. The youngsters like rock, reggae, or rap,and back in their towns, they try to be modern.Modernity appears and transforms the context ofnational identity.

Six years ago, the elders of an Otomí tribe nearthe Valle de Mezquital went to see the authorities ofthe Instituto Nacional Indigenista. They were angrywith a music band formed by some musicians thatadopted in the States the heavy metal style, and backin the town played the whole day long the Ramonesor Sex Pistols or Nina Hagen. And they played with

Continued on page 14

Professor AlexSaragoza, of

Berkeley’sDepartment of Ethnic

Studies, with CarlosMonsiváis at the Bay

Area FacultyColloquium

Carlos Chamorro,Teaching Fellow in

the School ofJournalism, withCarlos Monsiváis

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5FALL 1999

On May 21, CLAS hosted a breakfast meetingwith Miguel Angel Rodríguez, the President of

Costa Rica and an alumnus of UC Berkeley’sEconomics department. The meeting presented aselect group of faculty and graduate students withthe extraordinary opportunity to engage withPresident Rodríguez, First Lady Lorena Clare deRodríguez, and several key cabinet members in aninformal, open discussion of issues of mutualconcern, including public education, urbanization,and economic change.

President Rodríguez, of the center-right SocialChristian Unity Party (PUSC), ranks public educa-tion among the top priorities of his administration.Despite the rapid expansion of schooling during the1960s and 1970s, the economic crisis of the 1980sleft a legacy of high repetition and drop-out rates, aswell as uneven school quality across regions, socialgroups, and educational levels. President Rodríguezis committed to increasing the secondary enrollmentrate by 10 percent in the next four years. To achievethis, he proposes an ambitious program of expandededucational technology, distance learning opportuni-ties, and scholarships for needy students. He alsoenvisions a key role for the small, growing privatesector in educational reform, and is currentlystudying a school choice model in which the statefinances teachers’ salaries at tuition-free religiousprivate schools.

The institutional divisions between the sixth andseventh grades are marked by a large number ofdrop-outs and elevated failure rates in the first yearof secondary school. Understanding the ways inwhich young people negotiate this period, hesuggested, would provide insight into the complex,interrelated variables that limit educational achieve-ment and opportunity. “In Costa Rica, we find thatchildren who live near schools are not attending, andmany times they are not going to work, either. Weneed to look into school quality and the shock thatstudents experience during the transition stage,” thePresident said. He encouraged Leah Rosenbloom, agraduate student in Latin American Studies, tocontinue her research on the transition from primaryto secondary school in rural Costa Rica.

Education is pivotal, Rodríguez said, to economicand social development in a rapidly-changing,globalized environment. Tourism and high-tech

services are important new sectors of Costa Rica’seconomy, and require increased levels of humancapital. A well-educated workforce is critical toattract greater foreign investment and ensure that allCosta Ricans share in these new opportunities. Hecited the Intel Corporation’s recent decision to locatea $300 million production center — expected toprovide 2,000 jobs — near the Costa Rican capitalas evidence of the small nation’s comparativeadvantage in the high-tech field. In addition to alabor pool that is quick to learn, frequent flightsfrom the U.S., wide-ranging business services, long-term stability, and a well-established judicial systemmake Costa Rica a sound option for multinationalfirms. Rodríguez is also hoping to widen CostaRican markets by allowing the private sector tocompete with state-owned companies under aregulatory policy.

Within this globalized structure of progress, whatis most important for Costa Ricans to preserve?“Solidarity, tolerance, local development, and ourtraditions of peace and civility,” the Presidentreplied. The challenge, he said, will be to retain thesevalues as Costa Rica shifts from an agrarian-basedsociety to a more urban one. Angelina SnodgrassGodoy, a graduate student in Sociology who studiescitizen defense organizations in Central America,

A Conversation with Costa Rica’sPresident Miguel Angel Rodríguez

Costa Rican PresidentMiguel Angel Rodríguezdelivers the keynoteaddress at a facultyluncheon hosted byChancellor Berdahl

Continued on page 7

5FALL 1999

6 CLAS

As a professor, one is generally accustomed toselecting one’s own research topics — but this

changed for me when I went to Costa Rica. As thefirst director of the University of California’sEducation Abroad Program at the University ofCosta Rica, I spent two years working in Costa Ricain the late 1980s, and while there I found that myresearch projects quite literally selected me. Peoplein two of the many coastal communities I visitedapproached me about the need for research on issuesof considerable local concern. I agreed to help, andembarked on what now has been over 10 years ofresearch, Costa Rican style.

Our first project brought us to the most popular ofCosta Rica’s many beaches. Some years ago, theSunday Travel section of The New York Times identi-fied Manuel Antonio on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast asthe world’s most beautiful beach. The article, how-ever, did not warn potential visitors that ManuelAntonio was also a deadly spot for swimming; in the1980s, an average of 20 people per year drowned atthis beach alone. Some local residents invited me tojoin them in forming an NGO, Fundación deSalvavidas y Protección Costera de Costa Rica, to dosome research on the problem and devise solutions.

Of the country’s 600 or so beaches, we discoveredabout 30 that produced more than 90 percent of theannual 150 to 200 beach drownings (the country’ssecond leading cause of accidental death afterautomobile accidents). We found this was due tofour factors: the beaches’ popularity, their strong ripcurrents, the lack of lifeguards, and the minimalamount of beach safety education. In the late 1980s,no beach anywhere in the country had a trainedprofessional lifeguard, neither local governments northe national government had funds available tocreate a lifeguard service, and many beach hotels andrestaurants did not want to post warning signsbecause of the fear it would drive business away.

Some good swimmers were reluctant to helpdrowning victims because of the widespread beliefthat the person was caught in a remolino (whirl-pool), which would also suck in a would-be rescuer.

The first plan to solve the country’s two-coastdrowning problem was to create a National Life-guard Service, but previous efforts to do so hadbecome entangled in red tape. We devised a planthat would end-run the bureaucratic logjam bycreating, training, and equipping a local lifeguardservice financially supported by local businesses, andprovide the media and travel guidebook authorswith information about the dangers of rip currents.Francis Smith, then an undergraduate in Geographyat UC Berkeley and a lifeguard instructor, obtainedequipment donations and went to Costa Rica tohead the training. The Salvavidas de Quepos beganguarding the country’s most popular beach, ManuelAntonio, in December 1993 (see photo). Theirsuccess has been remarkable: in the first year, theymade 80 rescues and no drownings occurred. Theyhave been so successful, in fact, that some localbusinesses no longer see the need to providecontributions for their salaries — a commonproblem for public safety services everywhere.

Without funding to build a lifeguard headquar-ters and a system of beach towers linked by radiosand rapid-deployment vehicles and boats, however,the Quepos Lifeguards were equipped only withwhistles to keep people from going into dangerouswaters, and the skill and courage to haul them out.The decentralized plan had its limitations; theyneeded equipment. We decided to design a plan foreach lifeguard to have the equivalent of a miniaturelifeguard station with him or her on the beach.Francis Smith and UC Berkeley Geography 266students devised a Surf Rescue Backpack with all thenecessary lifeguard and lifesaving equipment,donated or sold at discount by several companiesthrough the help of Bob Burnside, former Chief ofthe Los Angeles County Lifeguards. The SurfRescue Backpacks are presently being field-tested inCosta Rica, and we hope that they will eventually beused in Mexico and other countries with coastalwater safety problems and volunteers available forlifeguard training.

The early research in Costa Rica has led us tolook into the problem of dangerous beachesworldwide (see our website: http://geography.berkeley.edu/dangerousbeaches/dangerousbeaches.html). From our research, we

Charting Costa Rica’s BeachesFaculty Research: Bernard Nietschmann

The QueposLifeguards on thebeach at ManuelAntonio. (On theleft, Don Melton,Francis Smith and

Prof. BernardNietschmann). Photo

by AngelinaNietschmann

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7FALL 1999

asked Rodríguez to elaborate on Costa Rica’s publicsecurity crisis. A sharp rise in crime has resultedfrom weak interpersonal relationships, economicdisplacement, violence in the media, and interna-tional drug trafficking, which have accompanied theurbanization process and demands of the globaleconomy. In this context, Rodríguez stated, it iscritical to restore public confidence in the stateapparatus. As a congressman, Rodríguez pressed tocreate a greater number of permanent positions inthe police force. Such positions would not bevulnerable to the change of government every fouryears, contributing to a more professional — andless political — institution.

Professors Beatriz Manz and BernardNietschmann both commented on the relativeflexibility of Costa Rican immigration policy. Twelveto 15 percent of the Costa Rican population isforeign born, the majority from Nicaragua. CostaRica’s approach to immigration is less stringent thanU.S. policies, Rodríguez said, and concentrates moreheavily on legal immigration than enforcement ofthe border. Currently there is an amnesty in effectfor refugees of the destruction associated withHurricane Mitch.

President Rodríguez also addressed Prof. DrewDougherty’s questions relating to the role of thehumanities in Costa Rican society. He explainedthat higher education had traditionally beenoriented toward the humanities, and a rich endog-enous literary tradition exists. Although unfamiliarto most North American audiences, Costa Ricanpoets and novelists such as Jorge de Bravo, FabiánDobles, and Joaquín Gutiérrez are important agentsof local cultural production. Rodríguez offered tosend a set of Costa Rican literary works to theDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese, a valuableresource for UC Berkeley students and faculty.

The meeting with President Rodríguez and theFirst Lady provided a unique exposure to the “insidetrack” of Costa Rican politics and contemporarysocial issues, and a valuable opportunity for Berkeleystudents and faculty to exchange opinions and ideaswith a sitting president.

—Leah Rosenbloom

estimate that approximately 1,500 people drownevery year on Pacific beaches in Latin America, fromMexico to Chile.

My second research invitation came fromcommunity leaders in Tortuguero, who asked me tostudy the return of the manatee to Costa Ricancoastal waters. Once believed to be locally extinctdue to over-hunting along the country’s Caribbeancoast, the West Indian Manatee (Trichechus manatus)had begun to appear again in the coastal waterwaysnorth of the port city of Limón. The reappearanceof this endangered species seemed to occur at thesame time as the tourism industry began to relymore heavily on the use of motorboats in the area.As Florida’s experience illustrates, manatees andmotorboats do not mix. In Tortuguero, the manateevs. motorboat situation became symbolic of aproblem that confronts many economies built onecotourism: excessive pressure on wildlife andenvironments to achieve economic success canundermine the very basis for that success.

After a few years of short trips and discussionswith local people about developing a community-based research effort, we began prolonged researchin 1995 to determine the status and distribution ofthe manatee. Working alongside Tortuguerocommunity members, U.S. volunteers supportedfirst by the University Research Expeditions Pro-gram (UREP), and later by Earthwatch, usedinterviews, satellite images, and GPS-referencedtransects to reconstruct the environmental history ofthe region. It became evident that the past decline ofthe manatees was more likely caused by massiveenvironmental change — due to deforestation andthe construction of an inland canal system toexpand banana plantations, logging, and cattleranching — than it was by overhunting. Thisfinding had major implications. If overhunting wasthe only reason for past manatee decline, then the

Costa Rica’s PresidentContinued from page 5

Continued on page 19

The Aquatic Explorer onthe Agua Fría River,southwest of Tortuguero,in June, 1999. DesignerRoger Dherlin is on theleft with other ApexInflatables personnel.Photo by Deirdre Doherty

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but rather part of an ongoing effort to establishnetworks of support and communication. The workundertaken by the Brazilian Ministry of HumanRights has consequences which cross borders of allsorts, Gregori emphasized, making internationalcollaboration both necessary and advantageous.

In many ways, the concept and definition ofhuman rights itself is constantly in flux, engaged in aprocess of ongoing consultation. In Brazil, Gregoriexplained, the process of implementing human rightsever more thoroughly across social and geographicspace leads to a continuous process of criticism andchange. Similarly, cooperation across nationalborders enables new insights and perspectives.Gregori called for the creation of a “new space ofsocial consensus” for the ongoing discussion ofhuman rights issues.

Human rights today has come to encompass farmore than civil and political rights. It is a perspectivefrom which many other challenges to citizens’ well-being can be understood. For example, globaleconomic crises clearly have consequences in thefield of human rights. In Brazil, Gregori explained,the flight of foreign capital and the “speculationattack” were stimulated by distorted internationalreporting that depicted the country as being on theverge of economic collapse, even though Brazil hadnot delayed any foreign debt payments. Thesesudden and drastic economic changes have severeimplications for human rights, yet the nature of thisrelationship has yet to be fully studied. The challengetoday, Gregori argued, is to “globalize globalization,”to invest the issue of economic vulnerability with asense of universality so that globalization does notbecome a new name for the old imperialism.

Professor Connie de la Vega, of the University ofSan Francisco and a Board Member of HumanRights Advocates, noted in her comments that theUnited States lags behind many other countries in

the implementation of human rights. The U.S. hasno human rights program comparable to theBrazilian initiative, and has ratified fewer of theinternational treaties and covenants. It has beenresistant to applying international human rightslaws within its judicial system, such as prohibitingthe death penalty for legal minors; the U.S. remainsone of only six countries in the world which retainthe death penalty for juveniles. Her comments alsoexplored the challenges of migrant workers’ rights,the connection between housing rights and violenceagainst women, and the need to eliminate the trafficin women and children in the United States.

Professor Naomi Roht-Arriaza of the Universityof California’s Hastings College of the Law calledthe new notion of human rights the “hallmark ofour time,” and included in it economic, cultural,and social rights, as well as civil and political rights.Emergent within this new human rights regime areperspectives on the right to health, a clean environ-ment, land reform, and protection from drugtrafficking and other social ills. This broaderspectrum has made possible a greater integrationamong organizations working on different types ofrights, as seen in the new collaboration betweenAmnesty International and the Sierra Club toaddress repression against environmental activists.In today’s world, Professor Roht-Arriaza concurred,issues of financial markets, multinational corpora-tions, and trade must be contemplated in a newapproach to human rights issues.

The many students, faculty, and communitymembers present at the event also participated inthe dialogue. One audience member suggested thatsome new programs focusing on women’s rightsexemplify the successful rethinking of traditionalparadigms. In 1995, following Brazil’s participationin the United Nations’ Fourth World Conferenceon Women in Beijing, women’s police stations werecreated — first in São Paulo, and then in the rest of

Brazilian Human RightsContinued from page 3

Continued on page 13

From left to right,CLAS Chair, Prof.Harley Shaiken;Brazilian Consul

General José LindgrenAlves; CLAS Vice Chair

María Massolo;Sociology Department

Chair, Prof. PeterEvans; and Secretary

Gregori. Photo byJames Lerager

Secretary José Gregoriwith commentators

Prof. Connie de la Vega(left), of the

University of SanFrancisco, and Prof.Naomi Roht-Arriaza

(right), of theHastings College of

the Law. Photo byJames Lerager

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9FALL 1999

It has been 26 years since a socialist last satin La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace; by

most accounts, this year’s December elections arelikely to change that. Ricardo Lagos, a 60-year-oldlawyer and economist with a distinguished career inacademia, international organizations, and Chileanpolitics, is favored to win, and become the firstsocialist president of Chile since Salvador Allende.Yet much has changed in 26 years, and if elected, itwill be a challenge for today’s Socialist Party tohonor Allende’s legacy while forging a prosperousfuture for Chile in the new millennium.

His supporters, however, say Lagos is up to thetask. A seasoned politician who has held ministerialpositions since 1990, Lagos is the candidate of amultiparty coalition known as the Concertación thathas ruled Chile for the past nine years. His cam-paign manager, Jaime Esteves, is a former Speaker ofChile’s Chamber of Deputies and spoke at theCLAS-organized “Alternatives for the Americas”conference last December. While past candidates ofthe center-left coalition have been Christian Demo-crats, Lagos represents the “new socialism,” orsocialismo renovado, a movement that has led the oldChilean Socialist Party toward liberal democracy andmarket-oriented public policies. This turn to thecenter originated in 1979, when a group of partyleaders decided to challenge traditional orthodoxy.

The group was led by Jorge Arrate, currentlyMinister of Government in Chile, and a VisitingProfessor at CLAS earlier this year; and CarlosAltamirano, the leader of the Socialist Party duringthe rule of Salvador Allende. The reformists saw thedemise of Allende’s government as not simply anoutcome of hostility on the part of the Chileanright, or of the United States CIA’s intervention, butalso the result of inexperience and misguided actionswithin Allende’s own government.

Given this historical background, the possibilitythat a member of Allende’s party will again bepresident of Chile represents an excellent opportu-nity for the Chilean Socialist Party to do justice tohis legacy. The policies they bring to the table today,however, are quite different. If three decades agothey were extremist and intransigent, now they hopeto act with prudence and are willing to compromise.If they once advocated land reform and nationaliza-tion of all industry, today they advocate privatizationand economic efficiency. If their overriding goal wasthen to end social exploitation through the establish-

ment of an egalitarian society, today they seemobsessed with the possibility of proving themselvesto the business community as capable of managinga modern, globalized economy.

In today’s political and economic climate, the factthat a previously radical group has shifted signifi-cantly toward the center is not entirely surprising.Given the ongoing processes of globalization andthe international appeal of neoliberal economicpolicies, the Chilean Socialist Party’s support foropen markets, deregulation, and privatization canbe seen as a reflection of a broader trend alreadyapparent in Spain, Germany, and the UnitedKingdom, as well as many Latin American coun-tries. Some observers argue that Lagos represents aChilean version of the “Third Way.”

Beyond the slogans, however, it seems clear that agovernment led by Ricardo Lagos will not alter thebasic premises of the economic policies Chilefollowed in the last decade. First, the entrenchedpower of the Chilean right, institutionalizedthrough the so-called “designated senators,”guarantees it veto power over any legislation,significantly limiting the new administration’sability to implement reforms. And second, neo-liberalism itself seems inevitable to most of Lagos’technocratic team. This inertia, however, could leadto serious political problems, because many ofLagos’ supporters expect — or demand — a changein the economic model which has so far failed tointroduce equity into the system. Indeed, despite 10years of a healthy economy, the gap between richand poor in Chile has actually grown underneoliberalism. For all its economic success, Chileremains a profoundly unequal society.

The legacy of past problems is likely to hauntLagos’ administration in political matters as well.First, there are mounting pressures to deal with the1,500 “disappeared” Chileans whose bodies remainunaccounted for, more than two decades after themilitary coup. The arrest of General AugustoPinochet in London has encouraged Chilean judgesto take a more active role in prosecuting humanrights violators who may know the whereabouts ofvictims’ remains. The armed forces have expressedgreat concern for the growing numbers of theirmembers who have been asked by the courts to bedeposed in cases that they thought were closed forever.

The fate of General Pinochet himself may pose

Ricardo Lagos Strong Contenderin Chile’s Presidential Elections

Continued on page 13

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10 CLAS10

Latin Americanists on Campus

Amos Megged, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of General History at theUniversity of Haifa, Israel, specializes in social and cultural history of early-colonial Mesoamerica. A Visiting Scholar at CLAS this year, his present researchdeals with the indigenous-Spanish discourse of the colonial courts in Mexico andCentral America during the formative period of 1530 to 1590. He is studyingintercultural conflicts during this period, evolving racial categorizations, and therelationship between Indian communities. His recent publications includeExporting the Catholic Reformation: Local Religion in Early Colonial Mexico (E.J.Brill, 1996); “The Religious Context of an ‘Unholy’ Marriage: Elite Alienationand Popular Unrest in the Indigenous Communities of Chiapa, 1570-1680”(Ethnohistory, Vol. 46:1); and the forthcoming “The Social Significance ofBenevolent and Malevolent Gifts Among Single, Caste Women in Mid-Seventeeth-Century New Spain” (Journal of Family History, October 1999).Megged has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He recently received anIsrael Science Foundation research grant and is an editorial board member ofColonial Latin American Historical Review.

Prof. Jocelyne Guilbault, new this semester to the Music department, is anethnomusicologist specializing in Caribbean studies. Since 1980, Prof. Guilbaulthas done extensive fieldwork in the Creole-speaking islands and the EnglishCaribbean on both traditional and popular music. Her most recent publicationsinclude Zouk: World Music in the West Indies (University of Chicago Press, 1993).Her focus on interpretive theory and methodology in ethnographic writings,aesthetics, and world music has also led her to produce several articles in majorperiodicals and to lecture across North America and in major internationalconferences in Europe and the Caribbean. She is currently working on two bookprojects, one on musical bonds, boundaries, and borders in the Caribbeanexperience both in the islands and abroad (Traditions and Challenges of a WorldMusic: The Music Industry of Calypso), and the other on a selected number ofperformers of the English Caribbean (Superstars of the English Caribbean: ThePolitics of Difference in World Music).

Edgardo Rodríguez joins UC Berkeley’s Department of Music this semesterwith support from CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas yTécnicas). An Assistant Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and anAdjunct Professor at the Universidad de la Plata, Rodríguez’s interests includecontemporary musical language and 20th century academic music. He playsguitar and also composes both classical music and tango.

Glauber Silva de Carvalho, from the Universidade de São Paulo, is currentlyaffiliated with UC Berkeley’s Sociology department as a Research Associate. Aspecialist in urban violence, Silva is working on an ethnographic study of a mar-ginal area in São Paulo, notorious for its high crime rates. Despite the violence,Silva reports, these neighborhoods are governed by their own rules, making themsometimes safer places than middle-class residential districts. While at UC Berkeley,Silva plans to explore American sociological theory and its contributions to thestudy of urban violence. His visit is supported by the Rotary Foundation.

CLAS

11FALL 1999 11FALL 1999

Paula Worby, a Visiting Scholar at CLAS this year, has over 15 years of researchand activism experience in Guatemala, under the auspices of such organizationsas Oxfam America, the Guatemalan social science research center AVANCSO,and the United Nations. Since 1992, when thousands of Guatemalan refugeeswho had fled to Mexico were in the midst of negotiating their collective return,Worby has worked with the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR). She has served as an observer and mediator to the negotiationsbetween the refugees and the government and often between the refugees/returnees and communities opposed to their return. At different points, herassignments have included everything from logistics for returning groups of2,000 or more to project design, inter-institutional coordination, documentationfor ex-guerrillas, and conflict resolution among returnees. In 1999, Worbyreceived a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, enabling her to taketime to reflect and write on a number of issues. Among the topics she is explor-ing are Guatemala’s land purchase programs, female returnees’ efforts to gainequal land rights, the conflict mediation mechanisms used in the refugee returnprocess, and the significance of UNHCR’s 12-year history in Guatemala insupport of the reintegration of former refugees.

Mark Danner, staff writer for The New Yorker and regular contributor to TheNew York Review of Books, who in June was named a MacArthur Fellow, returnsto Berkeley this fall as a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of Journalismand a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights. Danner iscurrently working on two books, The Saddest Story: America, the Balkans and thePost-Cold War World and Beyond the Mountains: Haiti and the Legacy of Duvalier,both to be published by Pantheon next year. Danner received the EdwardCunningham Award for “Best Reporting from Abroad of 1998” from theOverseas Press Club for his series of articles on the war in the former Yugoslavia.He won the National Magazine Award for Reporting for a series on Haiti in1990 and numerous awards in 1994 for a New Yorker piece, “The Truth of ElMozote,” which was the basis for his first book, The Massacre at El Mozote: AParable of the Cold War (Vintage, 1994). Danner has also written for Aperture,Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and the World Policy Journal,among others. As a Teaching Fellow at UC Berkeley last year, he taught courseson “Wars, Coups, and Revolution” and “Economic Chaos and its BloodyRepercussions.” This fall he is teaching, with former Undersecretary of StatePeter Tarnoff, “Nightmares: Covering Political Violence and Global Catastrophein the Next Century.”

María Esther Epele is a medical anthropologist with a Ph.D. from the NationalUniversity of La Plata in Argentina, where she is a faculty member in theNatural Sciences School and Museum. She is currently doing an ethnographicstudy of Latinos with AIDS in the Mission District of San Francisco, within thecontext of drug abuse. She is also researching gender relationships and streetculture in this realm. Her previous work focused on terminally ill AIDS andcancer patients in Argentina and included the papers “Lógica causal y (auto)cuidado. Paradojas en el control médico del VIH-SIDA” (1997) and “Instituciónmédica y subjetividad. Poder y saber en la construcción de la terminalidad enoncología” (1997). Epele has a postdoctoral grant from CONICET (ConsejoNacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas). She will be affiliated withCLAS through December 1999 and with the UC Berkeley Department ofAnthropology for two years.

12 CLAS

Continued on page 13

This May, CLAS had the unique opportunity tolead a tour of Tijuana’s maquiladora zones for

the leadership and national staff of one of the largestand most influential unions in the United States:the International Association of Machinists andAerospace Workers (IAM). I participated as aninterpreter, helping to negotiate meanings betweenpeople from two very different sites in the evolvingdebate around globalization: organized U.S. laborleadership and maquiladora workers in Mexico.

Interested in exploring issues of regional social andeconomic development associated with off-shoreproduction, the IAM called on CLAS to help itsleaders acquaint themselves with the issues involvedin this increasingly common industrial trend. In thepast, CLAS Chair, Prof. Harley Shaiken, has led toursof the border region for UC Berkeley undergraduatesand members of the U.S. Congress. As part of abroader outreach effort to educate diverse constituen-cies on critical issues relating to Latin America, CLASput together a unique program focusing on produc-tivity, economics, and environmental issues. The tourallowed the leadership of the IAM to experiencefirsthand the sights, sounds, and sentiments ofmaquila production. For many participants, this wastheir first visit to Mexico, and the first time they hadcrossed the world’s only border between the first andthird worlds.

Maquiladora production has become increasinglypopular for companies from the United States,Japan, and Korea who seek to take advantage ofMexico’s low wages and its proximity to U.S.markets. At times, they maintain facilities in Tijuanaand in the San Diego area, using twin plants tocapitalize on the particular advantages of productionon each side of the border. However, some of thedifferences between production sites are becomingblurred, even as others become more marked:productivity in Mexican plants is comparable to that

of the United States, yet wages are declining. Thisdisjuncture between rising productivity and fallingwages was a central question raised during the tour,because it contradicts much of what is commonlyunderstood about productivity and the developmentof national economies.

As our buses looped through Industrial City,familiar icons in the United States such as Maxell,Panasonic, and Sony took on new meanings: theplants all advertise jobs for female workers betweenthe ages of 18 and 25, preferably with a sixth gradeeducation. The average turnover rate in these plants isabout 100 percent per year, and the average age foran employee is 19. And yet the plants also boastedbanners emblazoned with “ISO 9002,” signs of thehighest standards of production in the world.

We disembarked at Metales y Derivados. Thisabandoned battery recycling plant closed and lefttown, leaving open piles of carcinogenic wasteexposed to sun, wind, and rain. The site is one ofMexico’s most famous environmental disasters, yetthe waste has been sitting here for five years.␣ Wegathered behind the plant, at the edge of the highmesa upon which Industrial City perches. A smallriver runs past the factory and down through thesettlement of Chilpancingo at the foot of the mesa.␣Maquiladoras dispose of their waste into this river.A community organizer from Chilpancingo told usthat the river changes colors and odors every day,and that it glows at night.

We followed the river around to the town below,where we met with newly arrived migrants who livealong its banks, in houses built out of cardboardpacking crates purchased from the maquiladoras.Here we had the chance to talk with children andparents about their lives. Some of them work in thefactories that tower above them, and others lack thesixth grade education that the factories require.␣ I

Labor Leaders Experience Life on the Border

IAM President TomBuffenbarger shakeshands with Maurilio

Sánchez, a communityorganizer in Colonia

Chilpancingo

From left to right:Owen Herrnstadt,

Director of the IAM’sInternational

Department withEduardo Badillo, a

community leader inTijuana, and IAM

President TomBuffenbarger

12

13FALL 1999

talked with one family that could not afford to buywater for bathing; a little girl showed me open soreson her brother’s back that she said he gets frombathing in the river.

We also traveled to the exceptional neighborhoodof Alamar. Like many squatter settlements inMexican cities, Alamar began with no publicservices.␣ Through tireless organizing, they nowhave a school, electricity, plumbing, one paved road,and have even won title to the land.

Again on the buses, we headed away from thecenter of Tijuana.␣ As we rounded a curve, we sawbefore us an enormous expanse of dry rolling hillsand flattened stretches covered with bulldozers, newcolonias, and sparkling new factories the size offootball fields. Bulldozers were removing entire hillsto make way for even more flat, sprawling plants.The IAM participants witnessed evidence of themaquiladoras’ rapid expansion, spreadinginexorably outward into the parched landscape ofnorthern Mexico.

—Ingrid Perry-Houts

Brazil. These stations are entirely staffed by femaleofficers and dedicated to combating crimes againstwomen; a similar model is now being implementedin San Francisco, California. Secretary Gregoricredited the Brazilian feminist movement withtransforming the status of women from that of legalminors only 17 years ago to near juridical equalitywith men today. He also stressed the importance ofwomen’s participation in the struggle for humanrights, adding that women activists are able to bringwith them their knowledge from participation inother feminist causes.

The Brazilian Consul, José Lindgren, mentionedanother innovative program with positive portent forhuman rights in Brazil. A new voluntary civil servicehas the double benefit of providing young peoplewith training and work experience and bringingassistance to communities in need throughout Brazil.These kinds of programs have clear implications forthe new, “globalized” human rights discussed bySecretary Gregori and the commentators.

—Misha Klein

Brazilian Human RightsContinued from page 8

problems for the incoming President. Although it ispossible that the former dictator may return toChile even before the elections, a number ofcriminal trials await him in Santiago. These legalactions were initiated after his arrest in London, andpromise to produce tremendous tension in theChilean army and right wing. An environment ofinsecurity surrounding such issues could lead Lagosto compromise further with the military in order toavoid instability, perhaps by passing a Ley de PuntoFinal — a law or constitutional amendment puttingan end to all criminal trials concerning past humanrights violations.

Finally, Lagos will need to confront the democra-tization of some key institutions still under militarycontrol. Among these, the Chilean Senate stillincludes both elected members and “designatedsenators” who are appointed by the armed forces,presenting a particularly clear case for neededreforms. The National Security Council and thejurisdiction of military courts over civilians also willrequire reform in order to establish a truly demo-

cratic system in Chile.Amid such contentious challenges, Lagos’ victory

is far from certain. As this article goes to press, thelatest reports from Chile suggest that Lagos maynot be able to seal his victory in the first round, ashappened in 1990 and 1994 with past Concertacióncandidates. This time, the competition is fierce.Lagos’ opponents include a very charismatic andpopulist right-wing candidate, Joaquín Lavín, andCommunist Gladys Marín, whose support isgrowing among leftists dissatisfied with theConcertación’s social and economic policies. Asecond round of elections will be held if no onecandidate garners over 50 percent of the votes. Themost recent opinion polls show Lagos leading by amargin of more than 10 percent, but many observ-ers regard the threat of a second-round showdownas evidence that Concertación must still convincemany Chileans that despite current trends, it standsby its traditional promise of “growth withequity”(crecimiento con equidad).

—Javier A. Couso

Chile’s Presidential ElectionsContinued from page 9

Life on the BorderContinued from page 12

14 CLAS

loud speakers. “Expel them!” the elders shouted.“We can’t get along with the noise!” The Otomípunks defended themselves. “Wait a minute. Webring the money to the community. If they acceptthe dollars, they can also hear the music.”

I’m going to give you another proof of my thesis,or so I think. In 1994, the first [of January], a groupthat declared to be the Ejército Zapatista deLiberación Nacional took over four places inChiapas: San Cristóbal, Ocosingo, Altamirano, andLas Margaritas. They wore ski masks and bandan-nas, and they made a claim that their presence anddemands represented the concerns of the indians inMexico, the people they said NAFTA was going towipe out. After a week of battles, chaos, and at least300 deaths, there came a truce, and the biggestnational debate I have witnessed. Everybodyintervened, and to begin with, a new instantcommon place was established. Mexico still has greatpoverty, misery indeed, and without social andpolitical reform, instability may yet wreck all theworld’s economic reforms. On the one hand, youhave the boast of global competitiveness. On theother, what an anthropologist, Guillermo Bonfil,called “the deep Mexico,” el México profundo, in acontroversial book that became now an instantclassic. According to Bonfil, the deep Mexico is thehotbed of indian resistance, of genuine popularculture, of the behavior of the majority of thepeople. And now, as we have seen, Chiapas persistsafter five years, and not because of the forces ofanachronism, but for the needs of modernity.Zapatistas use the mass media, became pop celebri-ties, send faxes from the Selva Lacandona, useInternet; they almost declared in a filmic manner,“With God as my witness, we swear that we willnever be humiliated again.” And… they became acliché… but they persist, as a rejection of aglobalization that includes only, at most, 10 percentof the population.

In a very specific sense, we are living now in apost-nationalistic culture. There is not a real,profound belief in the healing and reconstructivepowers of nationalism. But there is an extraordinaryamount of faith in the nation. If that seems acontradiction, it’s because it is a contradiction. In

the global village, in each of the countries [there]persists the sense of belonging to a nation. Technol-ogy, in Mexico and everywhere, is transformingencounters and mentalities, in a leap from reality tovirtual reality and back again. I don’t know, nobodyknows, the extent of the metamorphosis, but at theend of the century of Americanization, it is possibleto affirm that we are still Mexicans, and proudly so,as they used to say in the forties – but a differentkind of Mexicans. If it’s a mirage, the very notion ofla mexicanidad, a dying invention, what is real is thenational culture, with international, national, andlocal traditions. Mexico is a Western country with astrong indian element. Mexico is an Americanizedcountry with a national perspective. Mexico is aninternational culture.

Then, can we talk about the specific difference?There is one. Every country on earth has it. And inthis case, it takes root in the strength of certaintraditions, the richness of some aspects of its cultureand, like every other Latin American country, theweight of inequality, the emphasis of poverty,ignorance, machismo, social injustice, and nakedauthoritarianism. I’m not saying that poverty is theessence of a nearly Kantian reality. I’m talking aboutthe role of ethnohistory, its myths, values, memories,and symbols, in assuring collective dignity, and somemeasure of dignity for the individual. For popula-tions which have come to feel excluded, neglected,or supressed in the world distribution of values andopportunities, also, according to many, the onlyguarantee of preservation of some form of identity isthe appeal of posterity to the future generation thatare ours because they think and feel as we do. It’s nota bad joke, even if it is a bad joke to declare that inthe era of post-nationalism we live in post-Mexico, acountry that survived nationalism but not thenecessity of saving a common language, a commonculture, an obligation of social justice. In post-Mexico, we face the same problems as before, but weselect the traditions we need, and we decide tosurvive a racist and overwhelming globalization. Inthe time of post, when everything seems to be post,post-Mexico is still a nation, and a cherished one forits people. “Post-Mexico, gringo y querido,” as theancient song declares. ■

Monsiváis on MexicoContinued from page 4

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15FALL 1999

For political scientist David Fleischer, elections inBrazil provide a window into the surprising

intricacies of the country’s political system. A keenobserver of Brazilian politics, and a professor at theUniversity of Brasilia since 1972, Fleischer moveseasily in academic, policy-making, and internationalfinancial circles; in addition to his duties at theUniversity, Fleischer consults for a number ofinvestment firms and publishes a weekly analysis ofpolitical issues in Brazil. He visited CLAS in May toshare some of his insights with students and facultyinterested in recent developments in Brazil, espe-cially the October 1998 elections.

Equipped with electoral and public opinion dataas well as a wealth of anecdotes, Fleischer spun thestory of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s1998 reelection. While Cardoso won convincinglyin the first round of elections, his lead was quicklyeroded by a series of negative factors, including alengthy university strike, increasing pressures forland reform from the landless movement, deepeningunemployment, and a spate of natural disasters. As aresult, early in 1998, public opinion polls showed adead heat between Cardoso and his closest competi-tor. To recover his electoral advantage, Cardosoturned to an aggressive media campaign and anumber of strategic compromises, which enabled hiseventual success. Within a month of the October 4election, his reelection was assured.

What does Cardoso’s election, and the length ofhis coattails in Congress and state offices, imply forBrazil’s future? On this question, Fleischer’s insightinto political alignments in Brasilia was particularlyuseful. For the uninitiated, alliances in Brazilianpolitics since democratization can prove extraordi-narily difficult to understand. The numerousBrazilian parties are notoriously weak, undisciplined,and porous. Fleischer anticipates a curious realign-ment in which the lines of cleavage during themilitary years return to prominence, producing abinary division between “ex-ARENA” (the militaryparty) and “ex-MDB” (the opposition) camps. Evenif the party system remains divided among three orfour major groups, Fleischer argued, some partyconsolidation is probable.

Fleischer also commented on the results of anumber of electoral innovations which debuted inlast October’s elections. For example, a 1998 lawrequired that female candidates represent 25 percentof a party’s list of candidates for diputado (represen-tative in the lower house). However, in spite of this

Elections, Brazilian Style

15

David Fleisherduring hispresentation atCLAS

legislation, fewer women were elected to the lowerhouse last October than in 1994. Moreover, of thosewomen elected, a large proportion of them werewives of traditional, well-known politicians. Thecareers of women in politics, it would seem, benefitmore from solid political connections than fromnew electoral designs.

Similarly, the recent elections saw the introduc-tion of new electronic voting machines. Nearly 60percent of Brazilian voters in 537 cities cast votesthis way. Brazil has traditionally enjoyed high ratesof voter turnout, even during the military yearswhen the elections were not particularly competi-tive. Largely because of a mandatory voting law,Brazilian turnout rates have nearly always exceeded80 percent. However, a glaring black mark on theseturnout rates has been the number of blank and nullvotes cast by apathetic or frustrated voters. Thevoting machines, it was hoped, would cut down onthe number of these invalid votes. While thenumber of blank votes did decrease slightly with thenew machines, the number of nulls actually in-creased — a phenomenon which has surprised thoseconcerned with Brazilian elections.

On these issues and others, David Fleischer’sinsight was extremely helpful. His visit provided afresh appraisal of the business of elections in Brazil— an important institution worth monitoring giventhe country’s relatively recent democratization. Hisseminar was a reminder of the value of informationfrom scholars who, in a sense, have not left the field.

—Zachary Elkins

16 CLAS

Candace Slater:Visions of AmazoniaChancellor’s Professor of Spanish and PortugueseCandace Slater received in 1997 the Ordem de RioBranco, the highest honor that Brazil grants a foreignerfor “originality and value of [her] research.” Sherecently returned from fieldwork in Amazonia, whereshe has been exploring diverse images and understand-ings of the Amazon over the past 12 years. Thefollowing is an excerpt from her forthcoming book,Entangled Edens.

One bright November day in 1987, my studentsin a seminar on Brazilian Civilization at

Berkeley asked me for “something about theAmazon.” During what I thought would be a quicktrip to the library, I came upon surprisingly fewbooks that I could use in discussing the swirl ofvivid images that had accompanied the class’request. The multitude of travelogues and adventurestories that filled out the shelves only emphasizedthe relative lack of books concerned with Amazoniaas a symbol. Why, I asked myself, given the tremen-dous hold of the Amazon on many different people’simaginations, wasn’t there a book about visions ofthe region? Little did I suspect that I would myselfset out to write one. In the process, I would becomecaught up in the question of how the Amazon —once widely considered to be a chaotic jungle or aremote, forbidding wilderness — emerged as today’sthreatened, if wondrously diverse rain forest. And Iwould find myself newly aware of the profounddifferences and unexpected intertwinings betweenpast and present, “insiders” and “outsiders” thatmake images of towering trees and brilliant butter-flies only part of a much larger and far morewondrously complex picture.

A great deal has happened since my initial forayto the library and the first of what would becomeclose to a dozen research trips to different parts ofthe Bolivian, Ecuadorean, and, above all, theBrazilian Amazon. For instance, the burning forcattle pasture that made headlines in the 1980s hasreturned in full force after a temporary decline.Deforestation nearly doubled in 1995, then roseagain in 1997 and 1998, with the result that in thetwo decades between 1978 and 1998 well over atenth of Amazonia’s woodlands, representing anunusually rich, and still in many ways largelyunknown, chunk of the planet’s surface, has gone upin smoke.

Ironically, the tragedies of the region have had

some positive side effects. For instance, the deathin 1989 of Chico Mendes, head of the Brazilianrubber tappers union, marked the beginning of anew era of international visibility for grassrootsmovements protesting their devastation. Today,popular interest in the Amazon is once again onthe rise in the U.S. and Europe, linked in part tothe debates about sustainable development andglobal warming that regularly find their way intothe evening news. These developments haveprompted a number of new studies that stress theimportance and variety of the Amazon’s humaninhabitants. They have also spurred work specifi-cally on images of the Amazon and Amazonians bymany different sorts of writers.

And yet, despite all of this activity, the idea ofthe Amazon as a gigantic realm of nature popu-lated by a handful of natural peoples — Indians,rubber tappers, lone fishermen in tiny canoes —remains very strong. Why and how should theseimages hold such sway over an internationalpublic? And, if these portrayals — as I argue —often offer obstacles to new solutions, then howcan we begin to see the Amazon anew?

…The intertwinings as well as ruptures in theimages which emerge in the stories “ordinary”Amazonians told me and those which appear inTV documentaries and on ice cream cartons makeit impossible to see the Amazon or Amazonians asconveniently exotic. These intertwinings and theseruptures demand a re-vision of the roots of “our”rain forest, and along with it, a reevaluation of ourown ideas about not just Amazonia, but thehuman place within a larger world. This re-visionholds out hope for new solutions to urgentproblems by highlighting the assumptions thatconstrain our present sense of possibilities. ■

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Graduate Students Report on Field Research

Left, Anthropologygraduate studentMiriam Doutriauxmapping a site nearArequipa, Peru

Right, Landscape inthe North BolivianAmazon, where LauraBathurst conducted herfieldwork

Through its travel grant program, CLAS provides funding for graduate student research in Latin Americaand the Caribbean. This year, 18 grants were awarded to students from a range of departments and

professional schools. The grant recipients will present their research findings on Tuesday afternoons through-out the fall, as listed below. All talks will be held at 12 pm in the CLAS Conference Room.

17

September 21:Allison Davenport

Monica López

September 28:Laura Bathurst

Sebastian Etchemendy

October 12:Scott Hutson

Renata Andrade

Carlos Muñoz-Piña

October 26:Soledad Falabella

Alexandra Huneeus

November 2:Kristin Huffine

Katherine Fleet

November 9:Miriam Doutriaux

Nelson Ramírez

November 23:Adrienne Pine

Barbara Clifford

Migration and Children in Mexico and Central AmericaLatin American Studies: “Guatemalan Migration: A Maya Perspective”Social Welfare: “Mayan Children in Chiapas: Assessing the Effects of War on MayanChildren”

Political Economy in Bolivia and ArgentinaAnthropology: “Man the Gatherer: Indigenous Peoples and Commodity Productionin the North Bolivian Amazon”Political Science: “Political Economy of Market Liberalization in Argentina”

Landscapes and Perspectives on Land Use in Mexico and BrazilAnthropology: “Social Inequality in the Archaeology of Chunchucmil, Mexico”Energy and Resources: “Searching for Sediment Sources on the Upper São FranciscoRiver Watershed, Brazil”Agricultural and Resource Economics: “Ejido Reforms and the Appropriation of theCommons” (Mexico City)

ChileSpanish and Portuguese: “Gabriela Mistral’s Poema de Chile”Law: “Justice and Accountability in Chile”

Paraguay and the Dominican RepublicHistory: “Imagining the New World: Jesuit Ethnography and Guarani Response inthe Colonial Paraguayan Missions”Law: “Human Rights and Immigrant Children in the Dominican Republic”

PeruAnthropology: “Late Intermediate Period Interactions in the South-Central Andes”Spanish and Portuguese: “Contenidos de lo Audiovisual en América Latina: DesbordesNuevos y Reinvenciones Culturales, Cine, Radio, TV Nacional, TV Cable”

Women and Latin AmericaDemography: “Mitch, Maquiladoras, y Mujeres: An Examination of RecentDemographic Trends in the Female Population of Honduras”Public Health: “A Dialogue Between Traditional and Nurse Midwives” (Mexico)

18 CLAS

How do global forces like economic integrationalter the local built environment? What are the

spatial consequences of macroeconomic shifts, andhow have these affected the physical space in whichmillions of residents of Latin America live and work?A new working group of scholars at CLAS, the LatinAmerican Urban and Regional Planning ResearchGroup (LAURP), has embarked on the study ofthese and other questions. Its five members haveprofessional planning experience in a variety ofLatin American contexts, and academic training infields ranging from economics to architecture.Architect Gilberto Bueñano, for example, is cur-rently an Assistant Professor at the Central Univer-sity of Venezuela, and a contributor to theGovernment Program recently elaborated for newly-elected President Hugo Chávez; Saúl Pineda, a 1999Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, has served asEconomic Adviser to the Mayor of Medellín,Colombia. Other members are doctoral students atUC Berkeley and have worked and taught in Chile,Brazil, and Peru.

Under the leadership of Professor Manuel Castellsof the departments of City and Regional Planningand Sociology, this group began its activities inspring 1999 with a daylong symposium exploringdifferent planning issues in contemporary LatinAmerica. The April symposium, “Urban andRegional Links in the Global Age: Development andIntegration in Latin America,” was sponsored byCLAS, the Institute of Urban and Regional Devel-opment, and the Berkeley Environmental DesignAssociation. It included presentations on environ-mental, economic, and social issues in Venezuela,Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia, exploring issuesof sustainability and social justice in the context ofthe ongoing economic and social transformationsassociated with globalization. Based on the researchpresented on five distinct cases, participants were

able to identify many commonalities across coun-tries and theoretical contexts.

One of the cities examined in the symposiumwas Curitiba, Brazil, distinguished among the citiesof the Third World by the innovative way in whichit has directed its policies of sustainability, land use,and urban transportation. Clara Irazábal of theDepartment of Architecture presented her researchon Curitiba’s unique successes and its currentchallenges, arguing that despite clear improvementsin the urban quality of life, the city currently suffersfrom governance problems. Particularly problematichas been an apparent lack of political will to activelyinvolve citizens in the processes of urban planningand implementation. An analysis based on cross-city and cross-country comparisons in the Americassuggests that an adequate level of citizen involve-ment promotes more effective planning, and thatvery low rates of participation delegitimize theplanning process. If current practices of localgovernance persist, Irazábal warned, municipalauthorities’ legitimacy may be threatened inCuritiba. Yet the city could maintain the innovativedynamism that granted it worldwide recognition,provided that proper emphasis is given to thedefinition and development of strategies to com-petitively position itself within the urbannetworks of the global economy.

In the case of Lima, Peru, similar problems andprospects of development to those of Curitiba wereidentified, especially as regards industrialization.Miriam Chion of the Department of City andRegional Planning discussed the process of Peru’sreincorporation into the international economiccommunity by the mid-1990s, after a period ofsevere political violence and financial crisis. Thistransition, Chion explained, involved importanteconomic transformations and policies that led tothe consolidation of a new spatial organization ofmetropolitan Lima, the capital city. Chion’s researchexplores the intersection of global economicprocesses, local development factors, and emerginginstitutional arrangements during the 1990s. Heranalysis focuses on three important processes: theexpansion of international financial operationsthrough a new financial center; the intersection ofinternational and informal networks — especially inthe garment sector — to form a new industrialdistrict; and the growing importance of the makingof local identity through the rehabilitation of the

A New Working Group at CLAS

Examining Urban and Regional Environments

18

LAURP memberCecilia Collados, a

student in City andRegional Planning,

conducts research onthe Alto Bio-Bio

region of Chile, shownhere. Photo by Cecilia

Collados

19FALL 1999

The group expects to produce, distribute, andpresent a final report with detailed implications foreach country. This report will identify central issuesand contradictions in current development andplanning processes across regions. It will alsoinclude suggestions of areas in the institutionalstructure where intervention is possible, institu-tional indicators across regions, specific policies, andalternative arrangements conducive to sustainableand equitable economic development at the local,regional, national, and international levels. Fromthe exchange of experiences and ideas, this multina-tional and interdisciplinary group expects to proposeinteresting innovations regarding the design, creation,and implementation of institutions.

—Cecilia Collados and Clara Irazábal

historical center of Lima.For the members of LAURP, an understanding

of how the intersections of local and internationalnetworks have transformed cities and regions caninform planning processes and make them moreconducive to sustainable development. In the longterm, the group aims to focus on the processes ofspatial and institutional restructuring needed by thegovernments of regions and cities in Latin Americain their efforts to pursue sustainable development,while seeking to expand their access to interna-tional capital, information, trade, and globalinstitutions. Its research seeks to understand threedimensions of sustainability: social, economic, andenvironmental.

19

returning manatees should be safe, because huntinghad been outlawed. However, if environmentalchange was the main factor, then the manatees faceda serious problem, because destructive environmen-tal change was accelerating in the region. To themanatee research we added water quality testing,estimates of sedimentation, and indicators ofecosystem stress, such as fish kills from biocides. Themanatee research expanded to include the environ-mental quality and biotic status of the coastallowland aquatic system; instead of the canary in themine shaft as an indicator of problems, we looked atthe manatee in the coastal rivers.

As our research continued to expand, it becameevident we needed a better way for local communitymembers to obtain data about issues which affectedtheir environment without relying on a researchteam based elsewhere. Not only would it make sensefor those who would make decisions affecting thecommunity to be more directly able to participate, itwould also be less expensive and time-consuming ifresearch were centered on-site. Instead of having toreturn to a research base hub at the end of every daywith a mix of foreign and community researchers inseveral boats (racking up $2,000/day in expenses),we needed a research base in the areas we studied.This was the thinking behind the Aquatic Explorer,Central America’s first portable, floating, wetlandresearch laboratory.

The concept was to build a live-aboard vessel thatwould serve as home and lab for four people, solar-powered, self-containing, and portable (easilydismantled and transported). The Aquatic Explorerwas the high-tech answer, a vessel that looks like amix of something built for Jacques Cousteau andJames Bond (see photo). Designed by Roger Dherlinof Apex Inflatables in Costa Rica, with financialcontributions from the Pew Foundation and theNational Geographic Society, the Aquatic Explorerwill allow Tortuguero leaders, Tortuguero highschool students, National Park personnel and otherresearchers to do prolonged in situ research onmanatees, crocodiles, and the nature and quality ofthe aquatic environment.

Over the years, as we got into both of theseprojects, the evolving research questions came frommembers of the two coastal communities — ManuelAntonio and Tortuguero. In both projects many UCBerkeley students have worked with Costa Ricanstudents and community people to seek answers andto design solutions. We are still at it.

—Bernard Nietschmann

Bernard Nietschmann is Professor of Geography at UC

Berkeley. An ocean geographer specializing on the people and

wildlife of the coastal zone, his reserach has focused on the Pacific,

the wider Caribbean and both coasts of Central America.

Costa Rica’s BeachesContinued from page 7

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