Americas Plural - May 2012

Americas Plural May 2012

LucĂ­a, Matanzas Photographs of Cubans by Olga Lidia Saavedra Montes de Oca olisam@olisam.com

Index

Director’s letter Staff Highlights Fellows PhD students Notes from the field Key Projects Special Events Programme Reports Alumni Reports

Letter from the Director Professor Maxine Molyneux Greetings All, As ever ISA has had a very busy year with many high profile events, ongoing research projects, new publications to celebrate and a large teaching programme with some 60 students on board. A new focus on Cuba in Transition was added to one of our Masters options to enable students to take advantage of the knowledge on offer from the good number of Fellows and research students working on Cuban themes this year.

Our Visiting Fellows have also made a welcome contribution to our activities this year not only by contributing to our teaching programme but also organising events on the themes of their research. In the Spring term we were also pleased to have two distinguished Visiting Professors at ISA both of whom have expertise on Cuba and gave special seminars to students as well as public lectures to packed audiences. As part of the Caribbean Seminar series Professor Victor Bulmer Thomas, former Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies (precursor of ISA), presented an analysis of the Cuban economy since the revolution and considered the particular challenges faced in the present period. His latest book The Economic History of the Caribbean since the Napoleonic Wars will be published in the early Summer by Cambridge University Press.

Our other Visiting Professor, Hal Klepak of the Canadian Royal Military College, apart from being an expert on Cuba, has long studied Latin American military and strategic issues. Having spent some time in Buenos Aires this year he gave a lecture offering fresh perspectives on the Falklands/Malvinas dispute as part of ISA’s commemoration of the Falklands War. (The lecture can be seen as a podcast downloadable from our website, www.americas.sas.ac.uk). I am also very pleased to be publishing Professor Klepak’s latest book in the Palgrave Americas Series, which will appear as Raul Castro, A Military History also expected during the Summer months.

It has been a particularly busy year for the Latin America and Caribbean event programmes. Together with colleagues at UCL, LSE, and KCL, we launched a new Latin American history seminar jointly with the Institute of Historical Research. We also organised a number of debates on a range of topical issues, such as the Argentine elections, and on drugs and drug-related violence in Mexico, Brazil and Bolivia. Other conferences were organised on a variety of topics including the Argentine crisis of 2001, (with Maristella Svampa giving the keynote lecture); Indigeneity in the Andes, and Comics, Graphic Novels, and Collective Memory in the Americas, this last, organised by Alejandra Serpente, one of our current research students. A particular highlight was the extremely well-attended conference on whether the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s holds any lessons for the current financial crises. This conference was organised jointly with José Antonio Ocampo (Columbia) and Rosemary Thorp (Oxford) and funded by CAF-Development Bank of Latin America. We also welcomed Miguel Altieri of UC Berkeley to ISA to deliver our 2012 Globalisation and Latin American Development (GLAD) Lecture.

The Caribbean programme marked two significant anniversaries in the history of the modern Caribbean, with a conference on ‘Dr Eric Williams and the Making of Trinidad and Tobago’, and a conference to reflect on fifty years of independence in Jamaica. We also continued to convene the Caribbean Seminar Series, jointly with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, which included the presentation by photographer and artist Leah Gordon, readings by Trinidadian novelists Amanda Smyth and Monique Roffey from their latest books, and a book launch for Godfrey Smith’s political biography of former Belizean Prime Minister, George Price, highlights of which were screened on Belizean television.

ISA’s very successful programme of activities on the US and Canada also offered a good number of highlights.

The US Presidency Centre organized a well attended and lively debate on whether America is in decline, hosted a number of visiting speakers (notably Joel Aberbach of UCLA, David Greenberg of Rutgers, and economics consultant Phil Mullan) and held several book launches (for the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Theodore Roosevelt. Mark White (Queen Mary) delivered the Harry Allen memorial lecture on the Cuban Missile Crisis Fifty Years On, and Charles Postel (San Francisco State College) delivered the Bryce lecture on the American Commonwealth. The year ended with an ISA-Eccles Centre joint conference, held at the British Library in association with the International Association of Political Consultants, on Political Marketing and Consultancy in an Age of Global Crises. In the meantime, a number of edited publications emerged out of previously held ISA 2

US events, notably Michael Genovese and Iwan Morgan, eds., Watergate Remembered: Its Legacy for American Politics (Palgrave 2012) and Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies, eds., Broken Government? Politics in Obama’s America (ISA 2012).

The Canadian Studies programme was rich and varied, featuring talks on topics as diverse as aboriginal rights in the Arctic (by former Yukon premier Tony Penikett), memory and Canadian history (by Jocelyn Letourneau of Laval University) and the myth of Canada’s disinterested internationalism (by foreign ministry historian Hector Mackenzie). The year ends with two international conferences, one on Canada and the Asia Pacific, the other marking the bicentenary of the war of 1812, the latter a joint event with the US programme that received generous support from the US Embassy and the Canadian High Commission.

Over the course of the year we have also developed a number of useful electronic resources, amongst which the Women and US Foreign Policy Interview project and the Atlantic Archives project need particular highlighting.

For the first project, a hub has been developed which will provide extremely useful audio and transcript material, along with the project blog and the engagement forum, to scholars on a wide range of topics. Moreover, an online hub for the Atlantic Archive is being developed and will house a database, along with the project blog, engagement forum and a wide range of documents.

The Liberalism in the Americas Programme continued its very successful series of workshops (see website for details), with some outstanding contributions from participants in several conferences and workshops. The theme of the Spring workshop was Liberal Constitutionalism in the Americas and we were particularly pleased to have Professor Linda Colley from Princeton University as a keynote speaker. Her talk ‘Liberties and Empires: Writing Constitutions in the Atlantic World 1776-1848’ considered the ambivalent and selective character of liberty in colonial contexts. Our thanks are to Dr. Deborah Toner for all the good work that she has done to coordinate this landmark programme. Sadly for us but happily for Debbie she has been offered a lectureship at Leicester University which she will be taking up in October. For the June event on Economic Liberalism please visit the website for full details, as for other forthcoming events across our programme.

We continued to engage in the policy issues of the day with a series of events on Latin American and Caribbean politics. Funded by a grant from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Human Rights and Democracy Programme, ISA co-hosted a workshop on the role of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in the area of torture prevention, at the University of Palermo Law School, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The two day workshop brought together over 30 Latin American NHRI officials and international experts. You can follow project-related developments on the dedicated website (www.NHRItortureprevention.org). In March, ISA brought together leading academics, lawyers and policy makers to debate the opportunities and challenges faced by the Santos administration in bringing a resolution to the armed conflict and in implementing the Victims and Land Restitution Law in Colombia. This symposium was also sponsored by the FCO. The Caribbean Seminar Series offered analysis of critical issues in contemporary Caribbean politics, including a panel on the implications of political corruption for Caribbean democracy, and a presentation by former UK Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, on the current legal challenge to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Belize and its implications for the Commonwealth.

Some other events of note included another lecture in the very successful series on Latin American art (called Ojo), organised by Professor Evi Fishburn and Maxine Molyneux. We were delighted to have distinguished artist Ana Maria Pacheco speak about the Latin American traces found in her paintings and sculptures. As part of its commitment to outreach activity, in December ISA hosted a packed meeting across two halls of the Latin American community in London at which the Mayor, Boris Johnson spoke along with NGO, church and business leaders.

This will be my last newsletter from ISA as I shall be leaving this post on 30 June, after many memorable years, to take up the Directorship of the Institute of the Americas at University College London. This is an immensely exciting project to further research and teaching on the Americas. I will be succeeded at ISA by Professor Linda Newson, to whom I wish all the very best for the future.

Maxine Molyneux 3

Staff Highlights Professor Maxine Molyneux The last edition of Americas Plural reported on Professor Molyneux’s three-country research project on anti-poverty programmes in the Andes commissioned by CARE International. The report on that research, coauthored with Dr. Marilyn Thomson, has since been published in both English and Spanish. Thanks are due to the Peruvian Embassy for kindly hosting the launch of the report in December. The report has now been presented to the three governments of the countries in the study, (Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador) and a series of workshops have been held in the region to discuss the recommendations.

development policy which will include a selection of the papers from the social policy network workshop that they organised in 2011 at ISA.

Professor Molyneux’s other research- related activities involved giving lectures, talks and presenting papers at academic and policy related conferences in the UK and abroad. In Germany she presented a paper at an international symposium entitled ‘AntiPoverty Programmes in a Global Perspective’, held at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, (Social Science Research Centre) Berlin. Closer at home, in September she was invited to attend a high-level consultation in London hosted by the United Nations MDG Achievement Fund and IDS, Sussex, entitled ‘Action for Increasing Equity and Social Justice’. One outcome was the setting up of an international information and discussion network and lobby group on global inequality which is intended to engage the post 2015 MDG agenda. She also gave presentations at two events at the Overseas Development Institute on issues of social protection and safe motherhood, and she was commissioned In mid-January Maxine Molyneux was invited to to write an article and blog for The Guardian in speak about her research at the conference held to the Poverty Matters Section to mark International launch the final report of a five year DFID-funded Women’s Day (posted 7/3/2012). consortium, (Pathways of Women’s Empowerment ) led by Professor Andrea Cornwall of Sussex University. At the start of the academic year Professor Molyneux Professor Molyneux’s Working Paper for this project, presented the inaugural public lecture of the Gender originated in a presentation to the Ministry of Social Institute’s programme at the LSE in the Gendering Welfare in Cairo three years ago, as part of the project, the Social Sciences series entitled ‘The Retreat of and it was influential in the establishment of Egypt’s Neoliberalism in Latin America: A New Deal for first Cash Transfer programme, (available at http:// Women?’. It was a sign of the current great interest in www.pathwaysofempowerment.org/PathwaysWP5- Latin America that the LSE’s Old Theatre was packed website.pdf). Developed under the direction of Dr. and a lively Q & A followed the lecture, with, as ever, Sholkamy of the American University of Cairo, this excellent contributions from ISA students. programme is unusual for its gender sensitive design, Later in the autumn Professor Molyneux was invited and is a pioneer in the region.

by Canning House to give the opening talk on higher education in Latin America at the launch of the In addition to her research on social policy and social first ranking exercise of the region’s universities by protection, Professor Molyneux continues to work QS Rankings. The event naturally attracted great on women’s rights and the politics of law. A co- interest in the region, and was broadcast live on authored article on Colombia and Nicaragua titled video-link to some 2000 registered viewers based ’Abortion Law Reforms in Colombia and Nicaragua: in 60 universities in Latin America. The ranking Issue Networks and Opportunity Contexts’ has been exercise showed that the already established elite published in Development and Change vol 42/3, universities in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, 2011, pp 807-831. She is also editing a special issue Costa Rica and Mexico attained world class standards of the journal Social Politics with Dr. Jasmine Gideon by being well funded, staffed by full time faculty with of Birkbeck College on Latin American social and 4

doctorates, honouring commitments to research and seeking to achieve international recognition. While in those parts of the region where higher education still lags well behind its potential, there has been some progress, as there has elsewhere, in widening participation. Rising enrolment in both secondary and higher education has increased social mobility and led to a growing Latin American middle class with expectations of educational quality.

Professor Molyneux’s other professional responsibilities continued, among which she is an elected member of the Latin American Studies Association’s Executive Committee, a member of the Board of Trustees of Canning House, Chair of Standing Conference of UK Latin American and Caribbean Centres and elected member of the Scientific Council of the GIS Institut des Amériques, Paris. She is also Managing Editor of two book series, ISA’s in house list and the Palgrave Americas Series and is on the editorial board of Economy and Society, the Journal of Latin American Studies and is a member of the International Advisory Board of Development and Change.

Professor Iwan Morgan On October 25, Iwan delivered the keynote presentation of the Queen Mary Seminar Series in US History on ‘The President Impeached – Hollywood Style: A Comparison of MGM’s Tennessee Johnson (1942) and Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995)’. On November 8-9, he delivered presentations on The Twenty-first Century Presidency to the Congress to Campus 6th Form American Politics Conference at the British Library. Iwan also produced a co-edited volume: Michael Genovese and Iwan Morgan, eds., Watergate Remembered: The Legacy for American Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2012). This volume grew out of a US Presidency Centre Symposium on Watergate, held at ISA in late 2009, and was expanded into an international collaboration in association with the Institute of Leadership Studies at Loyola-Marymount College,

Los Angeles. The book, which is simultaneously published in both hardback and paperback, contains original research essays by four UK scholars and five US scholars. It examines Watergate as a constitutional crisis rather than a scandal, the more conventional label, and evaluates its enduring significance for late twentieth and early twenty-first century American politics, notably regarding the perpetuation of the imperial presidency, scandal politics, campaign finance reform, the public presidency, and cinematic imagery. Iwan was also involved in helping to launch the US broadcaster, PBS, in the UK in late 2011. He was invited to participate with Paul Gambaccini, Bonnie Greer, and Sir Bob Worcester in drawing up the list of The Best of America, the top 100 US achievements (in ten selected categories) that have had most impact on the UK to celebrate the national launch of this prestigious US channel.

Professor Kevin Middlebrook Professor Kevin J. Middlebrook has completed work on a co-authored book (with Professor Graciela Bensusán, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias SocialesMéxico) titled Organized Labour and Politics in Mexico: Changes, Continuities and Contradictions.

The book was published by ISA in Spring 2012.

The authors demonstrate that, as a consequence of market-liberalizing reforms and historic shifts in government policy toward labour, the Mexican organized labour movement has declined substantially in size, bargaining strength and political influence since the 1980s. Democratization has expanded workers’ choices at the ballot box, and some unions have bolstered their position by forging alliances with counterparts in Canada and the United States. Yet democratization has had remarkably little impact on the state-labour relations regime institutionalized following the Mexican Revolution 5

of 1910-20. This legal regime both underpins the position of unrepresentative union leaders and grants government officials extensive controls over labour organizations. The combination of weakened unions, unaccountable leaders and strong government controls fundamentally constrains workers’ capacity to defend their interests. This state of affairs — and especially the failure to enact progressive labour law reform since democratic regime change in 2000 — limits democracy and imposes heavy costs on society as a whole. By analysing the changes, continuities and contradictions characterizing labour politics in Mexico, the book contributes to a broader assessment of organized labour’s role in contemporary Latin America.

Peruvian culture held in Warsaw, Poland, where he participated in panel that included the former Polish ambassador to Peru and the current Ecuadorian ambassador to Poland. He presented papers based on his current research in early December at UCL’s Spanish and Latin American studies department and in March at the Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge. In late March, he was invited to take part in a graduate seminar at George Mason University in Virginia, USA, where he had the opportunity to discuss his book, The Allure of Labor: Workers, Race and the Making of the Peruvian State (Duke University Press, 2011), with students. In April, he participated in the European Social Science History Conference, held in Glasgow. As co-chair of the Latin American Network, he convened a series of panels on a diverse range of topics, as well as commenting on a panel on various aspects of the history of the Since the last newsletter, Paulo Drinot has continued Rio de la Plata, and presenting a paper on the end of to coordinate the Latin American programme at regulated prostitution in Lima in a panel on Gender ISA. In addition to convening a full programme of and Sexuality in Latin American history. events, Dr Drinot helped to launch a new seminar series in Latin American history, run jointly between ISA and the Institute of Historical Research, and coconvened with Nicola Miller (UCL), Adrian Pearce (KCL), and Alejandra Irigoin (LSE). Dr Drinot published Since the last issue of Americas a couple of articles, ‘The Meaning of Alan García: Plural Dr Quinn has signed a Sovereignty and Governmentality in Neoliberal Peru’ contract with University Press in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 20:2 Florida for the publication of an (2011), pp. 179-195, and edited volume on Black Power ‘Web-Site of Memory: The in the Caribbean (forthcoming War of the Pacific (1879- 2013), the first volume of its 1884) in the Global Age of kind to examine the different YouTube’, Memory Studies meanings and manifestations 4:4 (2011), pp. 370-385, of Black Power across the region. Another edited and has continued work on collection, Politics and Power in Haiti, co-edited with a monograph provisionally Professor Paul Sutton, is currently under review with titled ‘Horizontal Wretches: Palgrave Macmillan. 2011-2012 was another very Venereal Disease, busy year for the Caribbean events programme.

Prostitution and Sexuality Highlights include two lively conferences on in Peru’ as well as on a ‘Independence and After: Dr Eric Williams and the number of edited volumes (including one arising Making of Trinidad and Tobago’ and ‘Fifty Years of from a conference he organised at ISA on the Great Independence: Jamaica’s Impact and Development Depression and its legacies in the Americas), articles, as a Sovereign State’ as well as the packed Caribbean and book chapters. In October he spoke at a conference seminar series programme which included events on organised by the Peru Support Group on the first one Belize, Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, Haiti, Cuba, the hundred days of the Ollanta Humala administration. Turks and Caicos and beyond, including the Atlantic In November, he was invited to an event on crossings of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company

Dr Paulo Drinot

Dr Kate Quinn

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and the peripatetic careers of George Padmore and C.L.R. James. As Vice Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies, Dr Quinn has also been involved in the organisation of their annual conference to be held at Oxford University from the 4th-6th July, and in selecting the winner of the Society’s annual prize which allows an arts practitioner from the Caribbean to present their work at the conference. Dr Quinn had a new batch of students on her Caribbean MA courses and they rounded off the year with a well-deserved Caribbean rum tasting. In the spring term, Dr Quinn was awarded a two-year AHRC International Research Network Grant on the subject of ‘Westminster in the Caribbean: History, Legacies, Challenges’. This network will bring together scholars, NGOs and policymakers in the UK and the Caribbean to consider how the political model inherited from Britain was adapted to the conditions of the Caribbean, its impact on Caribbean democracy and the challenges the model has faced over the period of independence. The network will both reflect on and contribute to critical debate in the region at a time of renewed discussion of the achievements and failures of Caribbean independence.

Dr Graham Woodgate On 21st September Graham had the great pleasure of presenting at Prof. Michael Redclift’s festschrift at King’s College. Michael was Graham’s PhD supervisor at Wye College and together they have produced a series of six edited volumes recording the development of environmental social theory from the turn of the 18th century through to the present. Since the last newsletter Graham has written and submitted a co-authored, invited paper to The Journal of Sustainable Agriculture entitled: ‘Agroecology: Foundations in agrarian social thought and sociological theory’. The article examines the origins and impacts of agricultural and rural modernisation in order to reveal the social foundations of agroecology as both ‘scientific discipline’ and ‘agrarian social movement’. The impacts of industrialization on rural societies and environments have provided a focus for research and social mobilisation since the 1800s and the paper considers some of the competing discourses that have accompanied the development of capitalist agriculture. It also reflects on the emergence of modern

environmental concern and how growing preoccupation with the negative impacts of industrialization has prompted radical proposals for the reformulation of longstanding sociological assumptions and approaches to agricultural and rural development.

Together with co-author Prof. Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán (Institute of Sociology and Peasant Studies, University of Cordoba, Spain) and Prof.

Stephan Gliessman (Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz), Graham has also secured a contract with Edward Elgar for a major new edited volume of specially commissioned papers to be published as ‘The International Handbook of Agroecology’.

From January 3-6 Graham delivered a short programme of research training in stakeholder and institutional analysis for sustainable agriculture and rural development for mid-career professionals at the Mediterranean Institute of Agronomy, Bari, Italy. The following week (913 Jan) he coordinated and contributed to the inaugaural module – (‘Bases Sociológicas de la Agroecología’) of a postgraduate programme in Agroecology at the International University of Andalucía, Baeza, Spain.

On 17th January Graham welcomed Professor Miguel Altieri of UC Berkeley to ISA, where he delivered the Institute’s 2012 Globalisation and Latin American Development Lecture entitled: ‘The Agroecological Revolution in Latin America’. On Wednesday 18th January, Prof. Altieri gave a keynote speech at East India House to launch the Centre for Agrecology and Food Security, before going on to Westminster, where he addressed the APPG on Agroecology providing ‘An overview of agroecology and its relevance to developed and developing countries’.

At the end of January Graham contributed a chapter on sustainable forest policy and management in the 21st century to a book entitled: “Impactos y previsiones ante el cambio climático en el medio Rural Mexiquense: una mirada desde diversas perspectivas” edited by colleagues at the Instituto de Ciencias Agropecuarias y Rurales of the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de México. During February he produced an on-line, distance learning module focused on ‘Governance 7

and institutions for sustainable rural development’ for a postgraduate course in Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Systems for Small-scale Farmers, delivered by the Mediterranean Institute of Agronomy, Bari, Italy. He examined the module at the end of April 2012.

Dr Deborah Toner Since the start of the academic year 2011-12, Dr Deborah Toner has continued to work on the research facilitation project, ‘Liberalism in the Americas: A Digital Library,’ which is focused on the creation of digital resources and an international research network for the study of liberalism in nineteenth-century Latin America and North America. She has secured conference grants from the Economic History Society and the Society for Latin American Studies, which have helped to support a programme of events for the project, including five research workshops and a series of public lectures. On the digital front, the project website now contains bibliographic resources, a comprehensive list of network members, their contact details, and research interests, and an interactive blog where members can catch up on and discuss project activities. She is also working with project partners at the British Library in the selection and processing of documents to be included in the project’s digital library. In November 2011, Dr Toner published an article in the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, vol. 25, entitled ‘Everything in its Right Place? Drinking Places and Social Spaces in Mexico City, c. 1780-1900’. She has completed a monograph entitled Alcohol and Nationhood in NineteenthCentury Mexico, which is currently under review, and is revising an article for publication in the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies. She is also currently co-editing a special edition of the journal Brewery History, on “Developments in the Brewing, Retail and Consumption of Alcohol in Northwestern Europe, 1200-1900.”

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Dr Matt Hill Since September 2011, Matthew has been working on both the Women and US Foreign Policy Interview project and the Atlantic Archives project. Key priorities for this academic year have focused on developing the technical and disseminations elements of the projects. Due to the mission of the school to foster research promotion and facilitation of others, the projects have to be interactive with the research community.

For the first project, a hub has been developed which will enable the audio and transcript material, along with the project blog and the engagement forum to be placed together. The first set of interview material has been transcribed and when all fifteen interviewees have approved the transcripts they will be placed in the online repository. The second set of interviews from categories one, two and four will be placed online in late 2012-early 2013. Matthew will be presenting a series of workshops at conferences and research seminars across the UK in order to engage with researchers examining the fields of US foreign policy and gender. These workshops will demonstrate how researchers can get involved in the development of the project, including what questions should be asked, and who should be interviewed. On March 14, 2012, for example, Matthew presented a 30 minute workshop at the fifth annual conference of the Society for the History of Women in the Americas explaining what the repository can do for researchers and launched the engagement forum. In order to advertise the quality of material that can be gained from the interviews, Matthew Hill is currently mapping-out a journal article examining the role gender equality plays in defining contemporary US foreign policy goals, and how equality blurs the lines between American values and interests. Finally, on December 2, 2011, in association with the London School of Economics and Political Science, Matthew co-organised a public lecture by the Former US

Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright titled Global Political Challenges: Women Advancing Democracy.

Not only was this an important event for itself, it also enabled Matthew to interview Secretary Albright for the project.

An online hub for the Atlantic Archive is being developed by the University of London Computer Centre and will house the database, along with the project blog, engagement forum and document workshops. The project blog is up and running, and the database, forum and document workshops will be up and running by April-May 2012. Approximately 5,000 images of The National Archives documents have already been taken and meta-data is currently being created by the archivist assistant, Ben Lafferty.

Matthew will be presenting a series of workshops at conferences and research seminars across the UK in order to engage with researchers examining UK-US relations. These workshops will advertise the research utility of the database, and demonstrate how researchers can get involved in the development of the project, including what documents should be digitised. In mid-July 2012, he will be showcasing the database and engagement forum at the 2012 Transatlantic Studies Association Annual Conference explaining what the archive can do for researchers.

Informally titled ‘The Elders of the Atlantic Archive’, in late 2012 the project will also host an event to bring experts in transatlantic relations together.

They will discuss and nominate which documents at The National Archives should be prioritised in the second round of digitisation. On February 29, 2012 Matthew facilitated the first document workshop on British and US sovereignty disputes regarding certain Pacific Islands for seventeen history students from the Norlington School for Boys, London. The aim is to hold a series of these workshops on different themes in order to refine them before they go on the project hub. In order to advertise the quality of material that can be gained from the archive documents, Matthew is currently researching a journal article examining great power rivalry between Britain and the United States during the 1930s and early 1940s. It discusses the sovereignty of various Pacific Islands, including Canton and Enderbury, and maps out how this rivalry took place.

Dr Ian Hart Dr Ian Hart was a postdoctoral fellow at ISA sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The main purpose of his fellowship was to refine his doctoral dissertation for publication; he has completed this, and feels that his manuscript is now of a higher standard and has wider academic appeal than when he joined ISA. His work examines debates in the twentieth-century United States over how national societal progress should have been measured. Another objective of his ESRC Fellowship was to engage with members of the policymaking community in the UK and abroad to foster discussion of the lessons of this history; to this end he organised a symposium, hold at ISA in January 2012, at which prominent figures from the US, Europe and UK in the field of social indicators research and policy implementation spoke. The event was entitled “What Makes Indicators of Societal Progress Politically Successful? Lessons from International History”.

Dr Hart also delivered two seminar presentations : the first was in the Institute of Historical Research series on United States history, on “The Environmental Movement and the Political Economy of the Nixon Administration”. The second was part of a special ISA seminar he organised with Professor Iwan Morgan and Dr Joe Merton (University of Nottingham) on “Expert Politics: The Rise and Fall of Technocratic Liberalism in the United States, 1960-1980”; his talk was entitled “The High Point of Political Faith in Expertise: The Project to Demonstrate How Great Society Programs Raised the National ‘Quality of Life’”. He has recently submitted two journal articles and is working on a further two, which he will submit to high-ranking journals in the fields of US policy history and social science history.

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Fellows Professor John Hughes, Former Robin Humphreys Fellow

US, Argentina, Venezuela during the George W Bush Presidency; A Triangular Relationship?

Triangles come in 9 different forms; they vary by length of the different sides and by degree of angulation.

But there’s one common denominator – they all have three sides. In domestic and international politics triangles are not new. Consider President Bill Clinton’s system of “triangulation” or the North Atlantic Triangle which was used as a means of analysing Canadian Foreign Policy for a good proportion of the 20th century.

So why US/Argentina/Venezuela ?

It’s partly personal. I lived in first Venezuela, and then Argentina during the Bush Presidency. And by academic background before becoming a common or garden diplomat I had been a specialist on US domestic and foreign policy. It’s also partly because I believe that intra-Latin American relations have become increasingly important. No longer do all roads necessarily lead to Washington.

Venezuela relations 2001-03; and the Antonini Wilson Case 2007-08.

The Argentine economic crisis resonates even more now in Europe than when I started to look at it. But I approached it from the perspective of analysing the US role and that of Venezuela .The contrast was stark. As President De La Rúa informed the then US Treasury Under-Secretary “I am looking at the man who holds the fate of my country in his hands”. By contrast the role of Venezuela was marginal. This is not surprising. In December 2001 the price of a barrel of oil was some US$14. The Venezuelan government was not cash rich and was preoccupied by its own internal problems.

That was certainly true also for the Venezuelan government during the period September 2001-March 2003. A democratically elected government faced a coup, and a strike by the employees of the state owned oil company which became a general strike in all but name. Also 9/11 had a momentous impact on US foreign policy and its relationship with the Venezuelan government. The relationship between the two governments was close and thick with meaning even though many have argued that it marked a turning point in the nature of that relationship. By contrast relations between Argentina and Venezuela remained largely peripheral. And not particularly close. In April 2002 Argentina rejected the nomination of a new Venezuelan Ambassador in Buenos Aires – quite an unusual occurrence.

The Antonini Wilson case study is not at the same level of political or diplomatic importance as the other two. It’s a story as to whether Wilson was allegedly involved in channelling money from the Venezuelan government to the campaign of then Presidential candidate Cristina Kirchner de Fernández. I make no judgement as to whether that happened or not. But, as I discovered, it served to show how the relationship between the US government and Argentina and So what have I found?

During my time at ISA I concentrated on three case Venezuela had changed since the 2001-03 period. It studies: Argentine Economic Crisis 2001-02; US/ also revealed the extent to which there was substance 10

to the Argentine-Venezuelan relationship that had been so singularly missing from the earlier period. This was true at the ideological level – President Chávez and President Néstor Kirchner taking a similar strong line on the US idea of a free trade agreement for the Americas at the Mar Del Plata Heads of Government meeting .And in President Chávez speaking publicly in Buenos Aires against US policy whilst President Bush was in neighbouring Uruguay.

Nor was the relationship between the Argentine and Venezuelan governments solely ideological. In the period 2003-06 Argentina signed more bilateral agreements with the Venezuelan government than any other. This was true also for the period 2007-09.

There was also a strong financial relationship as the Venezuelan government effectively acted as a broker taking Argentine bonds to the market.

So what conclusions could one draw tentatively?

Until the arrival of President Néstor Kirchner in Argentina the relationship of Venezuela with Argentina and vice versa lacked much in the way of substance. So little in fact that one would be hard pressed to argue that there was a triangular relationship with the USA in any meaningful way. No matter what the configuration of a triangle it does seal all three lines into a significant relationship.

On the other hand by the period 2007-08 there was not only a significant relationship between the two South American countries, but in different ways each continued to have a relationship of substance with the USA. Indeed there were some signs that the relationship among the three countries had become intertwined such that two sides of a triangle affected the third in its relationship with the other: i.e. the US view of Argentina was influenced by the relationship between Argentina and Venezuela.

What more needs to be done?

To broaden the scope of the study and to find more documentation on the relationship between Venezuela and Argentina.

Dr Jonathan Curry-Machado, Associate Fellow Currently employed as a Research Fellow with the Technology and Agrarian Development Group, at Wageningen University (the Netherlands), Jonathan Curry-Machado is an Associate Fellow at ISA, where he coordinates the British Academy Research Project ‘Commodities of Empire’. He was previously a Fellow at the Caribbean Studies Centre (London Metropolitan University) and Research Officer with the Crisis States Research Centre (LSE). He was based for several years in Cuba, attached to the Cuban Institute of Cultural Research ‘Juan Marinello’ in Havana; but also living and working in Alamar (Habana del Este), where he was involved with the Fayad Jamís Gallery and the founding of the Omni-Zona Franca group.

His current research explores Caribbean rural society and development on the frontiers of the plantation economy, in particular in relationship to sugar. His previous research was into the history of migrant engineers in the Cuban sugar industry, their interaction with Cuban society and the transnational social, technological and commercial networks linking Cuba into the global economy. His book Cuban Sugar Industry: Transnational Networks and Engineering Migrants in Mid-nineteenth Century Cuba was published in 2011 by Palgrave Macmillan. He has also researched and written about the socio-political and institutional impact of the post-1989 Cuban economic crisis. He is currently involved in developing new collaborative research projects: comparing sugar and tobacco in Cuba and Java in a global historical context; and the global circulation of scientific knowledge and technology.

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Professor Emeritus of History and Strategy Hal Klepak, Visiting Professorial Fellow

might otherwise have been possible. In addition to this commitment, I spoke also to the FCO on Cuba, alongside Emily Morris and Stephen Wilkinson.

For the Institute, I prepared a public lecture on the current Falklands conflict at the end of my stay which was well attended. The debate afterwards was both lively and informative. Professor Molyneux and her staff were extremely helpful in this as well as From January until everything else I did.

March I was at the Institute for the Study The stay also allowed me to prepare, through of the Americas as access to London’s incomparable wealth of archives a result of the kind and centres of strategic importance, for my role invitation of Professor as a facilitator in a course in Lima on modern Maxine Molyneux. peacekeeping operations. This six-day interruption The main reason for of my stay, while not welcome on many fronts, was the stay in London very interesting as it kept me current on an area of was to take part as a international relations of great interest. The Pearson visiting professor in Peacekeeping Centre, which I once served as a Board the graduate course member, is very active in Latin America preparing on the Transition in the armed forces for supporting the United Nations Cuba offered by the peacekeeping effort. And to be able to contribute to Institute. In that course I was joined by Emily Morris, this worthwhile effort has always been a pleasure for Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Liz Dore, Steve Cushion, Kate me.

Quinn and of course Jean Stubbs. Coming directly from Havana, my current base, I was able, I hope, to All was not work, however, I should say. As always give some very current thoughts on what is happening when I am in London I was able to meet old friends on the island at this crucial juncture. (both my MA and PhD are from the old Institute of The three seminars in the course that were my responsibility were on RaĂşl Castro as man and political leader, Foreign and Defence Policy in the Special Period and beyond (post-1990), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Much of the time in London was spent preparing these seminars.

In addition, however, there was time to work on another subject of interest, the Falklands dispute. I spoke to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the subject of the current state of the dispute, and as I was coming from a recent research visit to Buenos Aires I was able to be a bit more up-to-date than 12

Latin American Studies and I also served on exchange with the British Territorial Army for four years when I was young and in the Canadian Reserve Army) and enjoy the vast cultural life on offer in that wonderful city. I hope to repeat it all next year if the course is given again. Thanks to all who made it so pleasant and happily challenging.

Professor Jean Stubbs, Associate Fellow Having spent the Spring 2011 Semester as the Bacardi Visiting Scholar at the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies, it has been good to be back playing an active role at ISA this academic year. Best known as a Caribbeanist, I now find my personal research and involvement in collaborative research projects has been ‘Americas Plural’ in scope and also taken me beyond the Americas and Atlantic Studies to global history. While at UF, I conducted research on the late-nineteenth-century/earlytwentieth-century Cuban cigar presence in the North Florida/South Georgia area. I have yet to process and write up the findings, but it fast became clear this was a significant if all-but-forgotten history in the US South post-bellum period, reminding me yet again of the fluidity of cross-border connections, which have become so central to my two current major programmes of research.

The first of these is the Commodities of Empire project I co-direct out of ISA with project coordinator Dr Jonathan Curry-Machado and co-director Dr Sandip Hazareesingh at the Open University. With British Academy Research Project (ARP) status and funding since 2007, we have built up a cross-disciplinary global network of ‘commodity scholars’ producing innovative collaborative research. I am collaborating with Dr Curry-Machado in developing two comparative studies: one of the Western Caribbean (Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Jamaica), 17601930, a period when three crops - tobacco, sugar cane and coffee - impacted on and were resisted by rural

society while centering the islands in global trade, technology and science in ways that transcended the boundaries of empire and language; and another on Cuba and Java, two island territories in distant parts of the world and different imperial systems, which were catapulted to the apex of the global trade in sugar, tobacco and coffee, 1870-1930. I am also contributing chapters on the Havana cigar and leaf growing, respectively, to two edited volumes, one on luxury goods and the other on the global circulation and construction of agricultural knowledge.

My second major programme of research is The New Cuban Diaspora in Canada and Western Europe project, based at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, with 2011-2014 Canadian SSHRC funding, for which I am co-applicant with principal investigator Dr Catherine Krull. Queen’s has taken a lead in Canada in developing programmes for the study of Cuba, the Caribbean and Latin America, hosting the Canadian Journal of Caribbean and Latin American Studies under Dr Krull’s editorship, and I guest co-edited with her a special gender issue of Cuban Studies (2011).

The New Cuban Diaspora project is breaking ground by looking beyond the Cuban migration to the US, which dominates existing scholarship, and focusing comparatively on Canada and Western Europe in the context of broader past and present ‘commodity’, trade, investment and migration flows. We have advanced the project by hosting Dr Krull as a Visiting Fellow; holding a highly successful December day workshop, seminar and book launch for which we were awarded School Knowledge Transfer funding; establishing links with Queen’s International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex; and working with colleagues in France to submit a France-Canada proposal, since short-listed for funding, which envisages hosting two international workshops, in France in 2012 and at Queen’s in 2013.

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Professor Emeritus Elizabeth Dore, Visiting Research Fellow

I joined ISA as a Visiting Research Fellow in October 2011. ISA’s vigorous research culture and array of Cuba experts make it the perfect place for me to write a book about the oral history project I directed in Cuba. Collecting Cubans’ life stories was exciting, frustrating and wildly challenging because in Cuba oral history was taboo. After Gabriel García Márquez decided in 1975 to abandon his book about everyday life in the Revolution because, as he told friends, what Cubans said didn’t fit what he wanted to write; after the Cuban government closed the famous project led

by Oscar Lewis, which began in 1968 at Fidel Castro’s invitation, the Cuban government never authorised another large oral history project again—until ours.

Undeterred, call it dogged, in 2003 I put together a research team of top notch historians and writers, Cuban and British, and together we sought permission from the Cuban government to carry out a large oral history project. After intense but unsuccessful lobbying at the highest levels, a Cuban team mate suggested, as a last resort, that we pitch our proposal to Mariela Castro Espín, Raúl Castro’s daughter, Fidel’s niece, who was known for breaking taboos.

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She immediately agreed to sponsor the project. But despite her intimate access to the cupola of power, permission was not forthcoming. Just when the team was about to call it quits in 2005, the project was approved. We called it Cuban Voices.

Via an agreement between the University of Southampton, where I was Professor of Latin American Studies (now Professor Emeritus), and the Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX, the National Center for Sex Education) where Mariela Castro is Director, from 2004 to 2010 our team interviewed 110 Cuban women and men of different ages, walks of life, and political views, in cities and rural towns across the island. The in-depth, life history interviews, which spanned several months or years, began with: ‘Please tell us the story of your life.’ In the next breath we promised to do everything we could to preserve their anonymity. Sceptics, of whom there were many, said the project would fail because Cubans would be afraid to honestly describe their experiences, thoughts and feelings. Many interviewees were palpably uneasy at the beginning.

Yet in the end most talked with a remarkable degree of openness because, as several said, they wanted their story to be heard, their life taken into account when historians write about the Cuban Revolution.

The project had its ups and downs, its agonies and its ecstasies. It began with a glamorous inauguration in the Aula Magna of the University of Havana. Midway through officials closed it down because interviewees were saying the unsayable. We carried on, though somewhat less formally, after Mariela Castro and I arrived at a modus vivendi. We recorded the last interviews in December 2010, just when President Raúl Castro was announcing dramatic economic reforms.

The book I am writing describes the pains and the pleasures of living in Cuba, largely in the voices of the men and women who I and my teammates interviewed over the course of seven years. There

are two official histories of the Cuban Revolution: one told by the Cuban government and its loyal supporters; the other propagated by political leaders in Miami and Washington. My book relates how ordinary men and women living on the island remember the past and imagine the future. What they told us, how they described living in a country that has struggled for more than fifty years to fulfil a socialist dream contributes to the new history of the Cuban Revolution.

Other books based on the project have been, or are about to be, published. They include Carrie Hamilton’s, Sexual Revolutions in Cuba: Passion, Politics and Memory, (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2012, forthcoming); Aires de la Memoria, testimonies of Antonio Moreno Stincer, Mercedes López Ventura and Pedro Jorge Peraza Santos, edited by Daisy Rubiera Castillo, (La Habana: Editorial CENESEX, 2010); and Historia Oral: Debates y anályses sobre temas afrocubanos, religiosos, sexuales y rurales, essays by the Cuban Voices team, edited by Niurka Pérez Rojas, (La Habana: Editorial CENESEX, 2012, forthcoming). My recent articles include ‘Cubans’ Life Stories: the Pains and Pleasures of Living in a Communist Society,’ Oral History (40: 1, Spring 2012), and ‘Cubans’ Memories of the 1960s: The Ecstasies and the Agonies,’ ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America (VIII: 2, Winter 2009).

As part of the project we created an oral history archive that includes audio recordings of about 1000 hours of interviews with their corresponding transcriptions. The Cuban Voices archive will, someday, be open to public access in Havana and in the UK. As part of my Fellowship, I am contributing to two modules on the MA course: on Dissertation Research Skills I am teaching ‘Researching and Writing Oral History’; on Society and Development in Latin America: Cuba in ‘Transition’ I am teaching a section entitled ‘Gender and Generation’. Building on ISA’s distinguished team of Caribbeanists, with Maxine Molyneux and the other Cuban specialists, I will seek foundation funding to support academic exchanges connecting ISA with leading research and policy centres in Cuba.

My web page, with details of my publications, grants, teaching and consultancies—the whole lot—is www. soton.ac.uk/ml/profiles/dore.html. I look forward to discussing Latin American history, politics and society with students, staff, fellows and friends at ISA. You can find me hot desking at Senate House, or feel free to contact me at ed2@soton.ac.uk.

The Cuban Voices project was generously funded by The Ford Foundation and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). I received additional grants from the British Academy, The Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. The entire research team benefitted enormously from advice by Paul Thompson and Elizabeth Jelin, who joined us in the throes of our field work in Cuba.

The project web page, where you can find video clips of the inaugural ceremony, including speeches by Mariela Castro and Paul Thompson is at www.soton. ac.uk/cuban-oral-history.

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Professor Tristan Platt, Former School of Advanced Study Visiting Professorial Fellow The world quicksilver trade and the Rothschild monopoly (with emphasis on consignments from London to the Americas).

The initial research question was raised on observing the impact of Chinese demand for Californian quicksilver on the prices of supplies to South America in 1871. This suggested the need to situate the history of the quicksilver supply to the Americas in the global context of Rothschild’s quicksilver operations.

The research was mainly undertaken in the British Library, the Rothschild Archive London, and the National Archive at Kew, and the results were combined with documentation from Bolivia and Spain. A first publication on quicksilver packaging is expected out with Past and Present in February 2012, which will be Chapter One of a planned book.

Chapter Three deals with the Ratio (lbs quicksilver amalgamated with each silver mark). It was well advanced during the Fellowship, and presented at the Institute in November 2010. An anticipation of research results to be included in Chapter Two is in press with the Rothschild Archive Review. A fuller version was presented in another talk at the Institute in November 2011, which represents a solid advance on Chapter Two. Here I selected materials collected in the British Library (HCPP) to reconstruct the quicksilver flows to and from London. They included the quantities of quicksilver imported to London, with price and origin, and also the quantities reexported from London, with price and destination, with a complete series from 1830 to 1850, as well as several later years. From 1835 most could be identified with Rothschild’s monopoly of Spanish quicksilver. These figures were combined with some 16

of the correspondence to Rothschild from his agents in Mexico and the Pacific coast of South America, as well as from New York, France, Spain, Cuba, Russia and China. This chapter uses the idea of connected histories to compare quicksilver’s movements across three inland-bridges: first Almaden to Cadiz, second London to Liverpool, and third from the Bolivian port of Cobija up the Andes to Potosi. Quicksilver for the Andean mines was supplied through Rothschild’s commissions house Huth Gruning with branches in Valparaiso, Tacna and Lima. The chapter examines Rothschild’s agents’ attempts to manage quicksilver prices on the South American coastline, and follows the fortunes of a big contract between the Bolivian Government and Huth Gruning of Valparaiso. It ends with local perspectives on the price war unleashed in 1850 by the agents for Californian quicksilver, Anthony and William Gibbs, and compares Rothschild’s longdistance management of the crisis administered locally in South America by Huth Gruning, with Rothschild’s correspondence with his relative Lionel Davidson who in 1851 tried to negotiate the division of the world quicksilver market with Barron Forbes of San Blas and Mazatlan (West Coast of Mexico). Barron Forbes was the prime investor in the Californian mine of New Almaden in the 1850s (Mayo 2006).

During my time at the Institute I also finished an anthropological paper on Archives to be published by Sage Publications in July 2012. Finally, in November 2010 I gave another lecture at the Institute on the 16th century conquest of Charcas (southern Peru until 1776) which drew on materials published in an earlier book (Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne and Harris 2006) to produce a new interpretation of the White Silver-Mining King of the Qaraqara, Tata Ayra Kanchi Hanq’u Tutumpi, who also figures in Guaraní testimonies from the River Paraguay between 1516 and 1528, well before Pizarro had reached the mining centres of Porco and Potosí.

Professor Catherine Krull, Dr Libia Villazana, Visiting Research Fellow Visiting Research Fellow I have been busy working on a SSHRC funded project with Jean Stubbs, which focuses on Cubans living in Europe and Canada and has included doing field work in various countries. In addition, as Editor-in-Chief of two journals, I have put together two issues; Cuban Studies (with Jean Stubbs as guest editor) and the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Jean and I, along with a colleague in France, recently heard that we have been short-listed for the France-Canada Network grant that we submitted in early autumn. Based on our current project, we have been asked to be visiting resident scholars at Herstmonceux Castle, which is the International Studies Center for Queen’s University in East Sussex.

I have also submitted a book manuscript to the University Press of Florida entitled Cuba in a Global Context: International Relations, Internationalism and Transnationalism. And I have submitted a coauthored paper to a journal on ‘Adapting to Cuba’s Shifting Food Landscapes: Women’s Strategies of Resistance.’ Over the past few months, I have attended several workshops, symposiums, special events and given lectures/seminars at various universities. Along with Libia Villazana and Jean Stubbs, I organized a workshop on Latin American Diaspora and Transnationalism. This event took place at ISA on December 14 and concluded with a double book launch/reception for Cathy McIlwaine’s (Queen Mary) ‘Cross-Border Migration Among Latin Americans: European Perspectives and Beyond’ (Palgrave, 2011), and Mette Berg’s (Oxford) ‘Generating Diaspora: Memory, Politics and Nation Among Cubans in Spain’ (Berghahn, 2011). I have also been invited to give a seminar at Oxford’s new North American Programme and to participate in an upcoming workshop at the University of Aberdeen on Cubans Abroad.

Cultural Events as Empowering Mechanisms for Latin American Communities in London.

Since the 1990s Britain has gradually become a major destination for the increasing Latin American exodus and London hosts the great majority of this community. The United States also closed doors to immigration in the mid-1990s, a measure which has contributed to divert part of the Latin American immigration flow to other countries, those of Europe.

As Luis Mario Tasamá, the director of El Carnaval del Pueblo, has pointed out, “the U.S. is no longer the paradise that everyone dreamt of, so, one has to look for other paradise” (Interview with Villazana, November 2008).

Within the above context, my cross-disciplinary research (Cultural Studies, Migration Studies and Geography) focuses on the study of the integration and cultural participatory mechanisms of the Latin American communities in London. The principal objective of the research is to explore the potential of Latin American communities for building community participation and interconnectivity with the host culture by actively engaging in cultural exchange.

The organisation of cultural activities together with the production and dissemination of information through the Latin American media operating in London, have served not only as a catharsis within the adaptation process but they have also propelled a degree of empowerment in the Latin American communities. My research studies the ways in which the organisation of cultural events as well as the ethnic representation and self-representation through the Latin American media has allowed Latin Americans to achieve significant visibility in London. Their voices are being heard not only by common Londoners who attend the Latin American events and consume the Latin American media but also by politicians who are beginning to acknowledge the increasing financial importance of the Latin American communities in the capital. The conceptual framework of my 17

research intertwines the theoretical approaches concerning cultural identity, migration and cultural policy studies. The study also revisits transnational theories; in particular, the concepts of transnational communities and second generation immigrants.

The rationale of the study responds to the upsurge of Latin American cultural events produced in London.

In 1999, only one Latin American film festival was organised, in 2007 there were five and by 2009 the number increased to eight. London hosts a Latin American music festival since 2001 and a Latin American theatre festival since 2007. Also, in May 2004 a Brazilian carnival took over the West End of Oxford Street; this event was sponsored by Selfridges, one of the largest department stores in London.

Furthermore, since 1999, the capital hosts the largest Latin American outdoor festival in Europe, Carnaval del Pueblo. At the same time, in the recent decade, London has seen an increase in the production of Latin American newspapers, magazines and radio programmes all bringing either information from various countries of Latin America or addressing more specifically the news generated within the Latin American communities based in London.

The above research is the continuation of a study I initiated in October 2008 while I was a Research Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, Germany. During 2008 and 2009 I conducted fieldwork involving in-depth interviews with key figures of the Latin American cultural sphere in London and a Participant Observation exercise. The interviews included the Colombian Luis Mario Tasamá, director of Carnaval del Pueblo; the Argentinean Gabriela Salgado, former curator of Public Programmes, Tate Modern, London (20062011); Claudine Bongo, a community development officer working for Community Action Southwark (CAS); Lina María Usma, a community development support worker for Latin American Communities, which is a section of CAS; Roger Zoppola, former representative of Latin Americans with businesses in the area of the regeneration projects of Elephant and Castle; Mauricio Dávila, founder and director of the London based NGO Discovering Latin America (DLA), an organization devoted to showcase Latin 18

American culture; Neil Baker, the director of the 7th Discovering Latin American Film Festival; and Daniel Goldman, the founder and director of CASA Theatre, the first Latin American theatre festival in London.

The Participant Observation exercise entailed to be an active member of a London based NGO, Discovering Latin America (DLA), which raises its funds through the organisation of Latin American cultural events in London. With this purpose, in 2009 I became the Director of the 8th Discovering Latin American Film Festival (8th DLAFF), which is arguably the largest film festival of its kind in London in terms of the amount of attendees to the event, the quantity of screenings organised and venues used. This experience allowed me for ten months to be an intrinsic part of the manifold dynamics of what it entails to be what I called a cultural volunteer within a Latin American setting in London. As the director of the 8th DLAFF, I had the opportunity to conduct further interviews with twenty informants, all of them of Latin American origin and working as volunteers in DLA. After completing my work with DLA, in January 2011 I started my Visiting Research Fellowship at ISA. Here, the aim of my tenure was to prepare and carry out further fieldwork involving twenty five in-depth interviews with Latin American cultural and media players in London, organise a symposium entitled Londres Latino: New research on Latin American migration in London, writing a coauthored book on my findings and theoretical insights which resulted from my fieldwork. I also produced a medium length video documentary on the topic of Latinos in London during my tenure at ISA; the video is currently in post-production. My stay at ISA has certainly proved fructiferous; the Institute has not only offerred a wealth of bibliographical resources which has cultivated the historical and theoretical frameworks of my research, but it has also provided relevant networking opportunities which has in turn contributed significantly to the multidisciplinary and multi-sited components of my research.

PhD Students News Verena Brähler

Geoff Goodwin

My research is on the Inequality of Security in Rio de Janeiro which I define as the geographical, economic, social, demographic and political inequality in the access to and provision of security as a societal good and a human right. Since October 2011, I am conducting my field research here in Rio with the support of my partnering university Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania (CESeC). In this first phase of my field research I am conducting interviews with different stakeholders to get a better understanding of what “security” and “inequality” means in the context of Rio. It is often challenging to switch perspectives according to my interview partners. On some days, I discuss the state’s public security policy and the latest favela operations with police officials in the morning, and in the afternoon I interview a drug trafficker and learn more about arms trade, corruption and human rights violations. The highlight of my stay here was when I was interviewed live on CNN International to talk about the pacification of Rocinha, the world’s biggest shantytown.

I completed a couple of draft chapters of my thesis (The “double movement” in the Andes: land, labour & indigenous mobilisation in Highland Ecuador, 1964-2006) during the summer. Since early October, I have been in Ecuador undertaking additional empirical research. I have interviewed a number of indigenous federations and organised additional interviews and meetings for December. I have also conducted meetings and interviews with peasant communities and organisations in the southern and central highland provinces of Cañar and Chimborazo.

In addition, I have consulted the archives of regional and national newspapers to collate additional information on specific events during the period I am investigating (e.g. the indigenous “levantamiento” of 1990). I returned to England at the end of December.

I plan to have a complete draft of my thesis finished by the end of June with a view to submit by the 30th September 2012.

Sam Kelly My research focuses on the role of ethnicity, race and racism in contemporary Peruvian politics. More specifically, I am interested in how race and ethnicity help shape the ways voters construct socio-political profiles of electoral candidates, their parties and political projects during electoral campaigns, and how such (stereotypic) profiles, or images, impact on voter perceptions, preferences, and ultimately vote choice.

Inequality as the dominating feature: Pool of the Sociedade Germania and favela Vila Parque da Cidade in the background

Unlike some recent studies of ethnic politics in the region, my focus is on the intricacies of how, and not just how much, race and ethnicity impact on electoral processes. This not only entails exploring the processes by which voters construct political profiles of candidates and projects with regard to ethnicity, but also what exactly is the nature, and utility to 19

quo by lunching with the opposition leader in front of press cameras in San Juan. As the year progressed, momentum built for the first plebiscite on status since 1998. Approved by the Puerto Rican senate in December, this will take place in November. By that time, Puerto Rico’s Estado Libre Asociado – a status all major political parties find unsatisfactory – will be 60 years old. In my dissertation, I suggest that Puerto Ricans’ inability to reconcile the contrasting visions of freedom put forward by their leaders explains the endurance of the island’s peculiar political status.

I take a number of recent subnational elections in The failure to agree on the meaning of the term, I Peru as case studies, but will attempt to draw some argue, has had real implications for the enjoyment of inferences for parallel processes in national elections, freedom on the island. particularly with reference to the highly-polarising presidential elections of 2011. The fieldwork itself, drawing on political psychology approaches to the study of electoral behaviour, will consist of a series I have recently started as a MPhil/PhD candidate of experiments and focus groups aimed at simulating at ISA, and have been investigating recent political a (potentially) ‘racialised’ electoral campaign. It debates and legislative changes in media regulation in is hoped that such an approach will shed light on Latin America, with a specific focus on Argentina. My certain dimensions of the political process which research builds on my masters dissertation, which I have generally been ignored by existing scholarship completed at the institute in 2010. Since returning to ISA I have been reading on the relationship between on the region. the state, media, and democracy, and particularly My last few months have largely been focused on how current trends may be placed with the context refining the methodological design, primarily with of political and economic transitions in Latin America. regard to the experimental procedures, which has I intend to do fieldwork next academic year, basing entailed familiarising myself with a significant body myself in Buenos Aires, where I hope to interview of literature outside my field, particularly, and most government officials, academics, and those working in the media. critically, from social psychology. voters, of such ‘ethnicisised profiles’. Is, for example, ethnicity simply a political heuristic, an ‘informational shortcut’, which allows voters to efficiently make a wide range of reliable assumptions about a candidate or party’s values and policy preferences, or is ethnic identity itself an important ‘value’ for voters, influencing electoral allegiances notwithstanding specific policy considerations? These are the type of questions that existing scholarship has so far failed to fully address.

Robbie Macrory

Euan Mackay

Thomas Maier

Freedom turned out to be one of the words of the year in 2011. In my MA dissertation, I attempted a political history of the term in Puerto Rico’s twentiethcentury status debate. Since I started my doctoral research, several events have highlighted the ongoing struggle for freedom on the island. Just a month after my trip to Puerto Rico, Barack Obama made the first official visit by a US president to the island in 50 years. Obama declared Puerto Ricans’ right to selfdetermination, but signalled his support for the status 20

I commenced my studies at ISA in October 2011. My research focuses on the social imagination of the welfare-state in Argentina between 1930 and 1952.

I am particularly interested in the productive space between the knowledge production in the social sciences of the time, and the political realm across the whole political spectrum on issues of welfare and the regulation of the social. Additionally, I will focus on the transnational dimension of the discourse about the formation of a modern welfare-state in

Argentina. Both the diffusion of ideas about modern social policy from different, nationally organized societies, the translations of concepts and debates about the relevance for the Argentine reality, as well as the mobility of social actors in the Atlantic world are of interest.

the book ‘Jóvenes, participación y construcción de nuevas ciudadanías’ edited by the Centro de Estudios Socio–Culturales (CESC) of the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano.

I recently visited the ‘Iberian-American Institute’ in Berlin, Germany to assess the considerable records of the archive concerning social policy in Argentina.

More archival research will follow shortly in the National Archives, and other London-based research institutions.

Since the last update in the October Americas Plural, my major focus has been the continuation of the writing-up of my thesis on political clientelism in post-independence Belize. In August, I presented a paper on modern Belizean politics and current governance challenges at a Florida International University workshop in Miami. In mid-September, I had the honour to chair the first-ever Prime Ministers Forum in Belize that brought together current Prime Minister Dean Barrow and two of the three former prime ministers of Belize to reflect on thirty years of independence. (And I did get in a question on political clientelism). Also in September, I presented a paper on the pre-independence origins of political clientelism and the role of the first prime minister, George Price, at the 14th United Kingdom-Belize Association Conference held at Senate House.

Alejandra Serpente This term, I am working towards finishing the interview chapters of my thesis and to put together a whole first draft ready for writing-up. I have also finished co-authoring a paper currently under review, which looks at the diasporic commemorative practises of a group of Chilean exiles in the UK in terms of a ‘living memorial’ to the disappeared as victims of the Chilean dictatorship. Recently, I presented a paper titled Una Vez Argentina: A diasporic re-staging of postdictatorial ‘postmemory’, on a novel by the Argentine writer Andrés Neuman, in the conference ‘Visualising Violence: Art, Memory and Dictatorship in Latin America’, held at CRASSH in Cambridge on the 13-14 January 2012.

Dylan Vernon

Juan Venegas My PhD is about political disaffection among Chilean youth. I returned to London in August 2011 after having spent 7 months in Chile doing my fieldwork where I interviewed politically involved youth, Chilean politicians and members of a youth education movement that took place in 2006. After that, I have been writing chapters and preparing a new trip to Chile to analyze the current Chilean education movement. I am travelling to Chile in early January where I will interview the leaders of the new movement. Moreover, I just published a chapter in

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Notes from the field: Gaining and maintaining access when researching security, organised crime and violence by Verena Brähler, PhD Candidate Gaining access The key question that PhD students in the field of security, organised crime and violence are constantly confronted with is: “But how do you gain access to these people?” Whether it is our parents, supervisors, friends, the Research Degree Committee of our university or possible funding bodies, everybody wants to know our strategy for gaining access to those people “on the inside” – be they police, drug traffickers or slum residents affected by violence.

important thing you need to have when researching sensitive issues is time. If your field research trip only lasts a couple of days or weeks, most likely you will only scratch on the surface of things. Continued engagement is another crucial factor. Try to meet your gatekeepers and research participants on a regular basis. This will give continuity and stability to the relationship. Not all your meetings need or should be specifically about your research. In order to gain trust, it is helpful to share common interests, e.g. attending a public meeting together or meeting To make it short, there is no correct or universal at a community festivity. answer to that question because the ability to gain access depends on the research context, the topic, the country, the participants and – most importantly – on yourself, who you are, your personality, your out word appearance, your foreign language skills, and how you are perceived by others. From my own experience I can say that gaining access is not difficult.

The real challenge lies in maintaining access and managing relationships with research participants.

Usually when you are doing field research, you get in contact with people from your field very easily – at conferences, seminars, public hearings, community meetings or when visiting local NGOs. If one subject recommends talking to another subject, this is called snowballing. Access to groups is often made possible by a gatekeeper. In social science research, Managing relationships a gatekeeper is a person that helps you to gain Managing relationships with research participants access to the group you wish to study. Examples for over a period of time is probably the most difficult gatekeepers in the field of security, organised crime part: Where does your research end and a personal and violence are community leaders, police captains, relationship with the participant begin? How much drug abusers or victims of domestic violence. Because intimacy is allowed or necessary? How do you it is in the nature of people to be curious, making first respond to tears, confessions or threats by your contact with a gatekeeper is thus relatively easy. participant? How do you avoid witnessing crime and violence? Should you accept presents if you suspect Maintaining access they were bought with drug money?

However, maintaining access and establishing relationships of trust with research participants is Unfortunately, there is no handbook with a much more difficult. From my own field research straightforward answers to these questions. experiences I know that in a first meeting research However, the following tips might give guidance on participants offer very little information compared to how to manage relationships with gatekeepers and what they are willing to reveal after several weeks other research participants in the field of security, and months of knowing you. Hence, the most organised crime and violence: 22

Be honest: Be honest and transparent about the nature and purpose of your research and do not research covertly. This is unethical and could potentially increase the risk of witnessing something illegal.

Be patient: Developing relationships of trust needs time. Give respondents space and time to raise issues that they want to talk about, even though it is unrelated to your research. Plan sufficient time for your field research trip so that you do not get nervous to produce more results in a short time.

Protect your data: Make sure all your research notes and interview transcripts are stored in a safe place, no matter if they are on paper or in electronic format.

When doing field visits, you should never leave behind contact details and notes that could endanger yourself or your research participants when it falls into the wrong hands (e.g. it could be confiscated by the police). For example, if you have noted down information about one drug trafficking cartel in a booklet, do not take the same booklet when visiting a community under the control of a rival cartel.

Further reading Be yourself: Be true to yourself and where you come For more information and tips, I recommend reading from. Do not dress, speak or act differently just to Surviving Field Research: Working in Violent and make your research participants like you more.

Difficult Situations (2009) by Chandra Lekha Sriram et al. (London, New York: Routledge).

Do your homework: Before you meet your research participants or travel to (potentially) dangerous In recent decades there has been increasing attention places, do your homework. What do you know to mass atrocities such as genocide, war crimes, about the person you will meet and the place you crimes against humanity, and other gross human are visiting? How will you get there? How will you get rights violations. At the same time, there has been back home? Who is your contact? What information a vast increase in the number of academics and are you looking for? Have you informed someone on researchers seeking to analyze the causes of, and the outside that you are going? offer practical responses to, these atrocities. Yet there remains insufficient discussion of the practical and Know who you are talking to: You should be very ethical challenges surrounding research into serious aware who your research participant is and his or abuses and dealing with vulnerable populations. her standing in the group or community. Meeting with one particular group or having a more intimate The aim of this edited volume is to guide researchers relationship with one person might compromise your in identifying and addressing challenges in conducting reputation as an unbiased researcher. For instance, a qualitative research in difficult circumstances, such as community leader might be part of a wider balance conducting research in autocratic or uncooperative of power that you are not aware of. Talking about regimes, with governmental or non-governmental sensitive issues with this person might endanger officials, and perhaps most importantly, with him, yourself or other groups. Never push research reluctant respondents such as victims of genocide participants to reveal relationships that they might or (on the other side of the coin) war criminals. The have with criminal actors. volume proceeds in five substantive sections, each addressing a different challenge of conducting field Do not pretend you are one of them: Do not pretend research in conflict-affected or repressive situations: you are one of them (unless you are and have a Ethics, Access, Veracity, Security and Identity, more personal research motivation). Pretending to Objectivity, Behaviour. know what research participants are going through when they talk about extrajudicial killings, domestic violence or drug trafficking is not credible and could make them angry.

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Key Projects Commodities of Empire: the making of global networks

‘Commodities of Empire’ research explores the networks through which commodities were produced and circulated within, between and beyond empires, in particular during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It pursues the interlinking ‘systems’ (political-military, agricultural labour, commercial, maritime, industrial production, social communication, technological knowledge) that were themselves evolving during the colonial period, and through which these commodity networks functioned and themselves influenced. Of particular interest are the impact of agents in the periphery upon the establishment and development of commodity networks: as instigators and promoters; through their social, cultural and technological resistance; or through the production of ‘anti-commodities’.

Thus we are especially attentive to local processes (originating in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America) which significantly influenced the outcome of the encounter between the world economy and regional societies. Through such study of the historical movement and impact of commodities, we examine the processes of globalisation as it has arisen over the past few centuries.

In September, the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA) hosted the annual workshop of the British Academy Research Project ‘Commodities of Empire’ – of which ISA has been the London home since 2009, in collaboration with the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University.

Together the two institutions, with their specific regional coverage, bring to the project a global reach, which is enabling the drawing of historical comparisons linking the Caribbean and Latin America with Africa and Asia. Project Co-Director, Professor Jean Stubbs, and Co-ordinator, Dr Jonathan CurryMachado, are both ISA Associate Fellows. Working respectively on tobacco and sugar in the Caribbean (in the context of the broader histories of society, labour, migration and technology) their individual research, as well as the collective project, complements existing activities of the Institute – such as the postgraduate course on commodities in the history of Latin America (‘From Silver to Cocaine’) run by Dr Paulo Drinot. The project’s other co-director, based At the heart of ‘Commodities of Empire’ is a at the Open University, is Dr Sandip Hazareesingh, belief in the need to pursue research through himself specialising in South Asia and cotton. collaboration and comparison, thereby enabling a global, transnational, transimperial perspective to be The mutually reinforcing relationship between developed out of a wealth of locally and regionally ‘commodities’ and ‘empires’ has long been recognised, embedded studies. The international network of with the quest for profits driving imperial expansion, commodity historians that we have developed and the global trade in commodities fuelling the since the project began in 2007 has thus resulted ongoing industrial revolution. These ‘commodities in the development of a number of innovative of empire’, which became transnationally mobilised collaborative projects. These have been stimulated in ever larger quantities, included foodstuffs (wheat, by our annual workshops, which have played a key rice, bananas); industrial crops (cotton, rubber, role in widening the scope of the project and drawing linseed and palm oils); stimulants (sugar, tea, coffee, in new participants. This year’s event (hosted by cocoa, tobacco and opium); and ores (tin, copper, ISA) brought together partners from the several gold, diamonds). Their expanded production and collaborative research initiatives that the project is global movements brought vast spatial, social, involved in. With the University of Wageningen (the economic and cultural changes to both metropoles Netherlands), we are exploring the concept of ‘antiand colonies. commodity’ – the agricultural and social processes that complement or challenge the local dominance 24

of commodity crops. This includes a study of rural society in the shadow of sugar-cane plantations in the Hispanic Caribbean. With the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), we are developing a comparison of the Hispanic Caribbean and the Netherlands Indies (in particular Cuba and Java), with respect to the three key commodities that were prominent in both (sugar, tobacco and coffee).

A first article from this will shortly be published in the New West Indian Guide. With the Grupo de Investigación Estudios comparados del Caribe y del Mundo Atlántico’ (CSIC, Madrid), we are establishing a project exploring the global circulation of scientific knowledge. We are also participating in, or in close communication with, other international research networks: Global Commodity Chains (University of Konstanz); Estudios Atlánticos (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria); Intoxicants and Intoxication in Cultural and Historical Perspective (University of Cambridge); South Asian Historical Records and Climate (AHRC, British Library); Planting an Empire (British Library); and the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). Commodities of Empire is also linked with the New Cuban Diaspora project – a collaboration between ISA and Queens University, Canada.

Arts/ferguson-centre/commodities-of-empire/ working-papers/) provides a space for members of the project and other invited scholars to publish their findings in a form that enables rapid dissemination in the public domain. Papers of particular interest to the Americas include: Puerto Rican tobacco growers (Teresita Levy), impact of commodity plantations on Cuba’s subsistence agriculture (Jonathan CurryMachado), Cuban popular resistance to the 1953 London Sugar Agreement (Steve Cushion), tapiocacassava (Kaori O’Connor), tobacco in the Dominican Republic (Jean Stubbs), and sugar, engineering and commerce in nineteenth century Cuba (Jonathan Curry-Machado). In 2009, we also guest edited a special issue of the Journal of Global History.

More information about ‘Commodities of Empire’ can be found on the project’s website (http://www.open. ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/commodities-of-empire/ index.shtml), or by contacting the Coordinator, Jonathan Curry-Machado (jon.curry-machado@sas. ac.uk).

In addition to receiving annual support from the British Academy, as an Academy Research Project, ‘Commodities of Empire’ has recently secured research network funding from the AHRC. This is for the development of our incursions into digital historical methods. Our aim is to establish an on-line platform acting as a research resource for commodity history, and we will be pursuing this through a series of workshops engaging with digital historians and others who have successfully applied use of new digital technologies to the humanities. We are also actively exploring the application of Geographical Information Science (GIS) methods to historical research.

The on-line Commodities of Empire Working Papers series (ISSN 1756-0098, http://www.open.ac.uk/

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Liberalism in the Americas This project supports comparative, transnational and collaborative research into how liberalism shaped political culture, economic policy, social development, international relations and intellectual culture in the Americas during the long nineteenth century. The initial stage of the project (to November 2012) is focused on creating a digital library of resources that speak to the development of liberal thought and praxis in Argentina, Peru, and Mexico during the period c. 1780-1930. In the longer term, the digital library will expand to represent the Americas as a whole, supported by the activities of an international research network, which has grown since its establishment in June 2011 to more than 80 members from around the world. This network comes together through a series of events, publications, and a digital research hub, not only to support and shape the development of the digital library, but also, as its core user community, to produce original research outputs through engagement with the project resources.

Consultation with the project’s Steering Group and Advisory Groups has shaped the project’s research facilitation agenda around several core themes, which structure the digital library and our programme of events. The themes covered in the digital library will include: Religious Freedom, Secularisation and Church-State Relations; Constitutionalism, Elections, and Citizenship; Free Trade and Property Rights; Slavery and Abolition; Race and Ethnicity; and Women’s Rights and Position in Society. Some 7,000 pages of material is currently being processed by the British Library’s imaging services team, and further documents for digitisation are currently being selected as the project aims to digitise between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of material by the end of the pilot phase of the project.

The Liberalism in the Americas project has also given rise to a series of events intended to survey and explore the major historiographical debates regarding liberalism in nineteenth-century Latin America in a comparative context. A series of research workshops, involving focused discussion 26

amongst a selected group of specialist scholars and advanced graduate students, have examined themes in the history of liberalism through comparative case studies on Mexico, Peru, Argentina, the United States, and elsewhere. Simultaneously, leading experts in the field have been invited to give a series of public lectures exploring key themes in the history of liberalism, either in their country of specialisation, or from a comparative perspective: Research workshops: 31 October 2011: Liberalism in the Americas: What is to be Done?

10 February 2012: Liberalism, Monarchy and Empire: Ambiguous Relationships 21 March 2012: Liberal Constitutionalism in the Americas: Theory and Practice 18 April 2012: Liberalism and Religion: Secularisation and the Public Sphere 6 June 2012: Economic Liberalism in the Americas Public Lectures: 31 October 2011: Prof. Gregory Grandin (New York University), “The Liberal Traditions in the Americas.”

1 November 2011: Prof. Klaus Gallo (Universidad Torcuato di Tella), “The Development of Laicism in Argentina, 1810-27: The Case of Juan C. Lafinur.”

5 December 2011: Prof. David Rock (University of California, Santa Barbara), “Liberalism in Argentina and Mexico: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives.”

10 February 2012: Prof. Roderick Barman (University of British Columbia), “The Enigma of Liberalism in Imperial Brazil, 1822-1889.”

21 March 2012: Prof. Linda Colley (Princeton University), “Liberties and Empires: Writing Constitutions in the Atlantic World, 1776-1848.”

18 April 2012: Dr Matthew Butler (University of Texas, Austin), “Revolutionary Religion? Liberalism and Catholicism in Post-Revolutionary Mexico.”

6 June 2012: Prof. Victor Bulmer-Thomas (Visiting Professor, ISA), “Freedom to Trade, Free Trade, and Laissez-Faire: Latin American Approaches to Economic Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century.”

8 November 2012: Prof. Jeremy Adelman (Princeton University), “Republicans, Liberals and Constitutions in Nineteenth-Century Latin America.”

Women and US Foreign Policy: Tea with Madam Secretary

Secretary of State to use military force and diplomacy to free Kosovars from Serbian aggression in 1999, of a woman that was involved in implementing democratising programmes for USAID in Kosovo, and then of a Kosovar woman who lived in Pristina and This project examines the relationship between was a beneficiary of a USAID project to implement women and US foreign policy through interviewing a civil society building programmes. series of people.

My most recent interview was with someone who could easily be counted in all four categories of interviewees, but in different periods of her life.

Madeleine Albright, the US foreign policy practitioner and policy-maker, the women’s rights implementer in foreign policy during her time as a US Ambassador to the UN and as Secretary of State, the daughter of a Czechoslovak dissident who was a recipient of US support during WWII and the Cold War, and finally as the academic examining foreign policy.

So, I arrive two hours early for my interview. As it turns out, she arrives 20 minutes late. And, after the formalities, our first interaction is quintessentially British, I say; ‘would you like a cup of tea?’ She says ‘Yes’, and she pours me a cuppa.

We then sit down, facing each other across the table, and I am nervous.

This interview, as well as all the others, can serve more than one mistress or master. Data can be used to support or refine arguments that a researcher is already making or it can be used as an inspiration for new research. And in line with the premise of this project it does not have to be overtly gender focused.

The very fact that one is utilising the voices of women on non-gender explicit subjects is itself an essential defining aspect of the project. In order to illustrate the utility of this interview and as an extension, this repository, I will concentrate on the case of national sovereignty versus the responsibility to protect.

The following is one of the questions I asked Secretary Albright:

What you get from interviewing the people that made important decisions or were directly impacted by these important decisions are first-hand accounts, it gives us details about personalities that help us understand and empathise. It creates a vertical link from the grower of foreign policy, to the worker that implements the foreign policy to the recipient of that policy. And at times the link between all three is more exigent when all three are talking about the same event. Think for example, of a woman that decides as

In discussing the US 1994 proposal to the UN to lead a military mission to oust what you called the ‘illegitimate leaders’ of Haiti, you mention that ‘several Latin American Ambassadors spoke against the proposed intervention on the traditional grounds of protecting national sovereignty’ [Madam Secretary: A Memoir, p. 200]. Do you see the decision by the Security Council to vote in favour of a US-led military engagement as the beginning of a significant development in a movement towards protecting human security at the expense of national 27

sovereignty?

Albright recounts how the 1990s were a transition period for states determining how to act in an international order where intra-state conflicts were damaging international stability. She suggests that after the Cold War, the role of UN peacekeepers changed from being solely the keepers of peace between former warring groups to the makers and enforcers of peace. And Haiti was an important first example of dealing with a crisis before it tipped over and became worse. It was a case whereby the sovereign was abrogating its responsibility to protect its citizens, and a decision determined by the international community and by conditions it set and not the Haitian people.

In a follow-up question on the emerging competition to the Westphalian notion of protecting national sovereignty by the responsibility to protect doctrine, as enunciated by Gareth Evans, Albright suggests that these two positions will sit uncomfortably side-byside for the foreseeable future. She poses a number of important questions on this emerging doctrine, the details of which have yet to be fully mappedout. For example, which agents can be legitimate enforcers of the responsibility to protect; NATO, adhoc coalitions? How can the doctrine philosophically combat opposition from countries that see these external forces as modern interpretations of imperial aggressive meddling of developed states with the domestic affairs of developing states?

The audio and full transcript of this interview along with a number of others will be made available in autumn 2012.

By Dr Matthew Allan HIll

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Special Events Commemorating the 2001 Economic and Social Crisis in Argentina On Thursday 8th December 2011 ISA hosted a day of discussion about the political, economic, cultural and social legacies of the 2001 Argentine crisis entitled ‘Crisis, Response and Recovery: A Decade on from the Argentinazo 2001-11’. Convened by ISA alumni - Dr Cara Levey (University of Leeds) and Daniel Ozarow (Middlesex University Business School) along with Dr Paulo Drinot (Institute for the Study of the Americas), a host of distinguished academics and emerging scholars from Argentina, the UK and beyond, rigorously debated many of the key themes from the last ten years. This multi-disciplinary conference emerged as a joint initiative between the Argentine Research Students Network (ARSN) and the Crises of Capitalism in the Americas Research Network (COCARN) and was generously funded by a conference grant from the Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS), the University of London’s School of Advanced Study Knowledge Transfer Grant and the Association of Argentine Professionals in the UK (APARU).

In the spirit of the polarised nature of Argentine society, at times the topics discussed aroused passionate debate from panellists and the large and diverse audience of academics, students, journalists, policy-makers and regional experts. Some of the most intense discussions centred on whether the social uprisings that enveloped Argentina between 2001 and 2003 represented the 21st century’s first genuine attempt by the “multitude” to transform the established political, economic and social order through the popular assemblies and range of (initially) largely autonomist social movements that emerged at the

time, or whether it amounted to a reactionary mobilisation inspired by little more than economic self-interest. The successes and failures of the postcrisis agro-export development model and social policies that have been pursued by the Kirchner government were also explored in depth. Panellists analysed whether the model has achieved income re-distribution or an increasing concentration of wealth; a strengthening or weakening of the country’s level of democracy; and whether it has helped to resolve or aggravate poverty. An additional debate centred on the question of whether the county’s impressive macroeconomic “recovery” is sustainable or whether growing inflation, imbalances in the economy and vulnerabilities in the soya complex mean that Argentina will remain exposed to cycles of economic boom followed by years of profound crisis, as it has done historically.

The conference concluded with a keynote speech by one of Argentina’s most authoritative academics and prolific writers on post-crisis Argentina, Dr Maristella Svampa (CONICET and Universidad de La Plata). Her fascinating lecture: ‘From “¡que se vayan todos!” to the intensification of the National-Popular Model’ discussed how the ambiguities, the tension between the continuities and ruptures with the past and the contradictory discourse of the Kirchnerist political project have gradually coalesced around a national-popular design that is firmly rooted in Argentine political tradition. The convenors plan to publish a collection of edited papers from the conference in a special edition of a leading Area Studies journal or book series in the near future.

In light of the fact that Brazil has recently been asked to provide finance to the IMF to lend to European countries who are in the midst of financial meltdown, the Conference contributes to the emerging literature on the lessons that the West can learn from Latin America’s Debt Crisis in the 1980s and Argentina’s own economic crisis a decade ago.

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Transnationalism,diaspora, and Latino London

in London, in a workshop to discuss critical issues of transnationalism and diaspora. We also sought to disseminate and contextualise the London experience in the wider experience of Europe, by celebrating the launch of two new books, one by Cathy McIlwaine on the Latin American migration in comparative perspective and the other by Mette Berg (Oxford) on the Cuban diaspora in Spain. Our overarching objective was simultaneously to broaden this with an open seminar and symposium, to disseminate and trigger discussion with the community and the wider public, specifically targeting policy makers, the media, and the Latino community in London.

New departures in research and outreach at ISA reflect the growing interest in Latin American and Caribbean diasporas, especially in London, but also elsewhere in the UK and abroad. This was an occasion for colleagues connected with ISA to join forces and mount a series of events, the importance of which was recognised by a generous School Knowledge Transfer grant towards travel and host costs. The first took the form of a day workshop, seminar, dual book launch and reception on 14 December 2011, followed by a half-day symposium and reception on The December 14 events were marked by excellent turnout and a lively and informed level of discussion, 20 January 2012. and we extend a vote of thanks to those who joined us from outside London and especially from abroad: Drs Nadine Fernández (USA/Denmark) and Anja Bandau (Germany, via skype!). The research already conducted renders visible the significant community of Latin Americans in London, calling for discussion and dissemination in its own right. There are, however, areas of research as yet understudied and/ or on which research is now being conducted, and this proved to be an excellent occasion to exchange knowledge and ideas emanating from what has been accomplished with the knowledge and ideas shaping the new research. Most importantly, this was an opportunity to plan next steps, such as a more formal network, with a web presence, for collaboration and Five of us came together as organisers: Drs Catherine dissemination, and new funding initiatives. We are Krull and Libia Villazana (ISA Visiting Fellows) and Drs confident an important first step has been taken Catherine McIlwaine and Patria Román-Velazquez toward a larger longer-term international project, and Professor Jean Stubbs (ISA Associate Fellows). involving academics and non-academics, sharing Our objectives were threefold. We sought to bring their knowledge and experience. We aim to convene together scholars who are beginning to collaborate a second workshop in a year’s time, plus smaller in their research on Latin American and Caribbean meetings in tandem with area studies conferences. migration to London, with UK and overseas colleagues researching the migration to Europe, and The January 20 half-day symposium and reception with doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, many of entitled Londres Latino: Latin American Cultures and whom are themselves part of the migrant community Mass Media was again exceedingly successful and has 30

made an impact on the Latin American communities based in London. The event was composed of two panels. The first brought together representatives of the Latin American media in London, such as ACULCO Radio, the Brazilian Post and Express News, and the BBC World Service to discuss issues of representation by mainstream, local and community media as well as the impact of this on policy making that affects Latin American communities in London. The second panel comprised the directors of Latin American House, Carnaval del Pueblo, and the London Latin American Film Festival, and a former art curator of Tate Modern London; they explored ways in which the upsurge of Latin American cultural activities in the UK has served to raise the profile of the presence of these communities and further their integration in the host country. Lively audience participation led to a dynamic exchange involving academics, media and policy makers, Latin American consuls, and members of the Latin American communities in London. This proved highly enjoyable and productive, as a major outcome has been an agreement to create a network of academics and community members to continue the dialogue and plan further joint action.

By Jean Stubbs

What Makes Indicators of Societal Progress Politically Successful? Lessons from International History On 12th January the Institute for the Study of the Americas hosted a one-day symposium on the question “What Makes Indicators of Societal Progress Politically Successful? Lessons from International History” organised by Dr Ian Hart as part of his postdoctoral research fellowship at ISA (sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council). The symposium was convened against a background of growing interest from various parts of the UK and European policy-making community regarding how governments can discuss the progress of their societies in broader and more accurate terms than simply relying on measures of economic output.

The rationale for the symposium was that there are lessons to be learned from history, particularly from the “social indicators movement” in the United States (the subject of Dr Hart’s historical research).

The event, designed for those actively advising and researching on such issues, involved the presentation of various different historical episodes in which new sets of indicators have been introduced in the hope that they would influence policy. There followed a discussion based on a comparison of these episodes, in which participants attempted to draw out the lessons for today’s policy-makers and societal progress metrics designers.

Speakers included Professor Heinz-Herbert Knoll, Director of the Social Indicators Research Centre at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and President of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies; Professor Marque-Luisa Miringoff, Director of The Institute for Innovation in Social 31

Policy in New York; and Katherine Scrivens, a senior researcher at the OECD. The event was organised in collaboration with the New Economics Foundation and sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council. Many of the twenty five participants were involved in the EU Commission’s ‘Beyond GDP’ project or the UK Office of National Statistics project on measuring societal well-being. A round-table discussion session at the end of the day engendered a lively debate about the lessons of this history for decision-makers in European governments; the discussions continued at dinner and beyond.

By Dr Ian Hart

Héctor Bejár, one of Peru’s most eminent intellectuals and a former guerrilla (Ejercito de Liberación Nacional), gave a fascinating talk at ISA on 9 February 2012. He appears here flanked by Professor Middlebrook, who is holding a newly signed but well worn copy of Béjar’s famous book, and Dr Drinot.

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Learning from Latin America: Debt crisis, debt rescues and when and why they work Held on 20 February 2012, the conference Learning from Latin America: Debt crises, debt rescues and when and why they work was organized by the Institute for the Study of the Americas and sponsored and funded by CAF – Development Bank of Latin America. It gathered together experts that have studied the various Latin American debt crises, and in some cases, participated in their management. These experts presented their experiences and contributed recommendations in regard to the lessons for the current European debt crisis, based principally on the region’s experiences since the 1980s (with a few glances at the insights coming from the 1930s). The papers presented in written form may be found on: http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/videos-podcastsand-papers/.

The background The papers by José Antonio Ocampo and Stephanie Griffith Jones set out the background. Latin America suffered the results of the 1980s crisis for more than two decades. In economic terms, the 1980s was known as Latin America’s lost decade and was preceded by a global financial boom with the re-cycling of petro dollars that allowed the region to access credit at low interest rates. However, this boom was interrupted by the ‘Volcker shock’ in 1979 that raised real interest rates up to five times compared with previous years, mixed with a commodity shock which cut commodity prices in half (the index of real nonoil commodity prices (1980=100) decreased from 130 in 1971 to 60 in 1991). By the end, the shock was massive and its effect lasted until the beginning of the 21st century. Real interest rates paid by Latin America only returned to moderate levels in 2005 and commodity prices in real terms returned to the levels of the 1970s only after 2004.

The crisis began in 1982, when several Latin American countries admitted their inability to pay their bank loans. The crisis in the 1980s had three phases: the first phase lasted up to September of 1985, and was characterized by severe macroeconomic adjustments and limited financing and was treated by policy makers and by the international financial community as a short-run crisis. The second phase (from 1985 to 1987) was mainly characterized by highly conditioned structural adjustment. The third phase (until 1989) brought the Brady Plan which gave renewed access to private financing and late and partial writeoff of debts.

What did Brady ‘solve’ for Latin America?

José Antonio Ocampo, Stephanie Griffiths-Jones and Alessandro Leipold all gave us insights on the weaknesses and strengths of the Plan, while two analysts commented from first-hand experience on Brazil and Mexico, having played insider roles in the management of the crisis: Senator Rosario Green, a former Foreign Minister of Mexico and currently a member of the Mexican Senate, and Carlos Eduardo Freitas, an experienced Brazilian banker and academic who is a former Executive Director of the Brazilian Central Bank.

The Brady Plan consisted in the creation of bonds to transform bank loans into a variety of new bonds.

The Plan allowed banks to exchange their claims on Latin American countries into tradable instruments.

The goal was to link repayments on the bonds with the rate of growth of GDP of each country and to limit the debt forgiveness required. Griffith-Jones explained how the implementation of the Brady Plan was only possible because the banks had already done their own provisioning to a significant extent.

In the striking phrase of Ocampo, ‘the debt crisis in Latin America in the 1980s was an excellent management of the problem for the United States and United Kingdom banks, but a terrible management of the problem for Latin American countries’. The Brady Plan was not sufficient for recovery, which only came with the increase of commodity prices and the new role of China. In fact the turnaround of the debt ratios came

before the Brady Plan: the peak of the region’s external debt was in 1986. Importantly, the Brady Plan did not include growth and productivity policies, the kernel of a serious solution to Latin America’s structural crisis. At the moment of its implementation, Brady gave a sense of ‘a solution’ having been achieved, when in fact it left aside important institutional reforms and failed to solve the underlying structural problems. This can explain why in many cases Latin American countries took two decades to recover the pre-debt level of key variables such as GDP per capita. Both the country-specific papers, on Mexico and Brazil, confirmed from the ‘inside’ the very high cost of delay – in the Brazilian case, according to Dr Freitas, this necessitated a prolonged period of ‘marking time’ – what might look like ‘muddling through’ but was in fact a conscious strategy of delay until the necessary conditions for a turnaround could be put in place. In the Mexican case, Senator Green said, the fiscal reduction came to 10 per cent of GDP. In the 1980s, Mexico went through five restructurings and became a net exporter of capital to the tune of 6 per cent of GDP. It was an important step when finally in 1989, debt reduction was substituted for debt postponement. In this, she said, the US leverage against the creditor banks was crucial. By 1991 Mexico became again a net importer of capital.

Does default ever help?

This was the provocative focus of the paper by Ugo Panizza. In general, the economic theory of sovereign debt has sustained that countries should logically borrow in bad times and pay in good times.

However, he argued, the reality is that countries do the reverse: governments act pro-cyclically. What the data also show is that the cost of defaulting in terms of access to credit disappears after three years. (Defaults may have a negative effect on trade, but there is no clear evidence.) The problem is, that if a default should happen in good times, it is then seen as ‘strategic’, i.e. a cheat, whereas default from necessity is classed as virtue. So we need institutions that can signal virtue, and provide incentives not to default strategically (i.e. make them expensive through 33

reputational and trade costs). One possible solution is to create a body with the ability to assess whether a default was indeed unavoidable and that can also increase potential recovery rates on debt.

The two cases of default discussed were Ecuador and Argentina. According to Alessandro Leipold, Ecuador’s first default in 1999 was not aggressive, but the second in 2008 was a case of ‘strategic’ default, based on the fact that the government saw the debt as acquired by an illegitimate previous government.

With some support from the IMF, the move has had some partial success, but Ecuador has still not returned to the international financial market. However, China’s provision of opportunities is enabling survival without this. On Argentina, the careful analysis from Roberto Frenkel is available on the web: the role of the debt default within a complex strategy, as he recounts, was very important for the room for manoeuvre it gave. In 2004, without the default, the debt service would have amounted to between 9 and 11 per cent of GDP. But the default was not the centre piece of the strategy, as he makes clear.

Should countries beware of borrowing?

This was a theme stressed by a number of speakers, which found an echo in the audience. In the Latin American crisis there was clearly a ‘supply’ side: banks anxious to lend, small banks trusting the evaluations done by large banks and generating a ‘herd’ effect. It is far healthier to rely on domestic savings. If necessary, capital controls should be used to regulate inflows. We need institutional changes to develop flexible market instruments to protect borrowers and enable them to relate payments to capacity to repay.

Governments are always going to face the problem that the financial sector is extremely powerful and strong, even during bad times. For this reason, financial markets need some kind of control.

Lessons for Europe?

We were well aware that in some senses in regard to ‘rescue’ strategies, Europe’s situation is significantly different from that of Latin America. Europe’s currency is a reserve currency, and the degree of integration of trade and finance is far greater. The institutions to 34

which money is owed are predominantly European.

But Europe shares with Latin America a system biased in favour of creditors, and prone to give priority to the need to rescue the banks. So delay is built in – and if Latin America has one lesson to teach, it is that delay is very damaging. And China’s search for raw material sources is not likely to lead it to provide to Europe the growth stimulus it has provided to Latin America An obvious lesson, but one that bears repeating, is that the Latin American countries that suffered least, were the ones that took early action – in the Colombian case, even borrowing less in the first place. The relative successes in Latin America – Colombia, Chile and Brazil – all acted relatively early to adjust, as well as receiving extra and early support from the international community.

The second lesson concerns institution building. For Latin America, important elements of institutional development were lacking, and their absence was extremely costly. (And indeed, the Brady Plan and continued restructurings diverted attention from the needed institution building – ironically, said one speaker, had this not happened, the institutions might have been in place now to assist Europe.) We emphasized the need for financial innovations that can better protect borrowers, and innovations to produce incentives not to default and better options than default.

The third lesson was the other missing element in the Latin American ‘rescue’: the growth and productivity policies that are needed to resolve its structural imbalances in employment, income distribution and trade. In fact the long dependence on stabilisation and adjustment distracted from this need and often weakened the very institutions important in productivity improvements. The final summing up of Enrique García, the President of CAF, underlined this: he stressed the need for precautionary measures and for the recognition of risk – but also for the integration of growth policies with adjustment.

Programme Reports Canada

The Caribbean

The Canadian Studies programme, though compact, was rich and varied in the topics covered. There were seminar presentations on aboriginal rights in the Arctic (by former Yukon premier Tony Penikett), memory and Canadian history (by Jocelyn Letourneau of Laval University) and the myth of Canada’s disinterested internationalism (by foreign ministry historian Hector Mackenzie).

2011-2012 was a bumper year for Caribbean events.

The programme marked two significant anniversaries in the history of the modern Caribbean, with a conference in September on ‘Dr Eric Williams and the Making of Trinidad and Tobago’ to mark the centenary of the birth of this Caribbean scholar and political giant; and a conference in February to reflect on fifty years of independence in Jamaica. The first, generously funded by the Eric Williams Memorial Collection in Trinidad brought together renowned scholars of the Williams’ period from the Caribbean, United States and Europe to explore the shaping of Trinidadian politics and society under the Williams’ administration and the legacies of this period today. Like Trinidad, Jamaica marks fifty years of independence in 2012, a milestone which was celebrated in the JISLAC-funded conference on ’Jamaica at 50’ which attracted record audience numbers and gave rise to impassioned debate from both speakers and the floor. Professor Brian Meeks of the University of the West Indies, Mona, gave the incisive keynote address, reflecting on ‘Jamaica on the Cusp of Fifty: Whither Nationalism and Sovereignty?’ The presentations from both these conferences can be viewed on http://americas. sas.ac.uk/events/videos-podcasts-and-papers/.

The year began and ended with three international events. In October 2011, Amy Hinterburger, our departing Canadian Studies specialist, organized a one-day conference on Identity, Diversity and Governance. Featured speakers included Patrick James (University of Southern California), Susan Hodgett (Ulster), Michelle Aguadio (Concordia) and Martin Adhani (Sweden’s Forum of Reform, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability).

On 25 June 2012, Iwan Morgan and ISA associate Fellow Tony McCulloch will mount a one-day event on Canada and the Asia-Pacific. This exploration of Canada’s changing geopolitical orientation from the Atlantic to the Pacific will feature presentations by the current Canadian High Commissioner, former ambassadors, and academics.

The Caribbean Seminar Series, jointly convened with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, offered a rich In July (12-14), ISA associate fellow Phil Buckner will programme of events throughout the year, presentbe the leading light in the organization of a three- ing research that ranged across Belize, Guyana, Triniday international conference the bicentenary of the dad, Suriname, Haiti, Cuba, the Turk and Caicos and war of 1812, which is a joint event with the US pro- beyond, including the Atlantic crossings of the Royal gramme. It has received generous support from the Mail Steam Packet Company and the peripatetic caUS Embassy and the Canadian High Commission to reers of George Padmore and C.L.R. James. Amongst fund the transport costs of visiting speakers for the the many highlights were the presentation by photogmajor European conference on a conflict that shaped rapher and artist Leah Gordon on the extraordinary Jacmel carnival in Haiti, readings by Trinidadian novthe course of North American history. elists Amanda Smyth and Monique Roffey from their latest books, and a book launch for Godfrey Smith’s political biography of former Belizean Prime Minister, George Price, highlights of which were screened on 35

Belizean television. The series also offered analysis of critical issues in contemporary Caribbean politics, including a panel on the implications of political corruption for Caribbean democracy, and a presentation by former UK Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, on the current legal challenge to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Belize and its implications for the Commonwealth.

amounted to something of a departure from the standard focus of our events, we were very fortunate to be able to welcome Ana Maria Pacheco, the Brazilian artist and scholar, to ISA. Ana Maria gave a fascinating talk to a packed audience on her art and life as an artist in Brazil and in the UK. This event was generously sponsored by the Brazilian embassy.

Latin America

There were a number of successful conferences on a broad range of themes. These included a conference marking ten years since the Argentine crisis of 2001, which featured a keynote lecture by Maristella Svampa; a conference on ‘The Return of the Indian’ organised in collaboration with Dr Tom Grisaffi of the Anthropology Department of LSE and kindly sponsored by the Peruvian embassy, which included a number of papers on indigeneity in the Andes; a conference organised jointly with James Scorer of the University of Manchester and Jorge Catalá-Carrasco of Newcastle University on comics, graphic novels, and collective memory in the Americas; an extremely wellattended conference on whether the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s holds any lessons for the current financial crises, organised jointly with José Antonio Ocampo (Columbia) and Rosemary Thorp (Oxford) and funded by CAF-Development Bank of Latin America; and a conference, funded by the FCO, on the current Santos administration and recent developments in several policy fields in Colombia. In collaboration with the International Institute for the Study of Cuba, ISA also held a one day conference on recent developments in Cuba, which included the participation of several scholars from the island.

On 17 January we welcomed Miguel Altieri of UC Berkeley to ISA to deliver our 2012 Globalisation and Latin American Development (GLAD) Lecture. Among his many other roles promoting sustainable rural development, Miguel is currently President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology and his lecture was entitled ‘The Agroecological Revolution in Latin America’. Agroecology was presented as a counter-narrative to the globalisation of industrial modes of agricultural and rural development, which draws on science, local agricultural practice and agrarianism. Miguel’s lecture attracted an audience

In 2011-12 there were a number of new developments in the Latin American events programme.

Together with colleagues at UCL, LSE, and KCL, we launched a new Latin American history seminar jointly with the Institute of Historical Research. Speakers included David Brading (Cambridge), Alan Knight (Oxford), James Dunkerley (Queen Mary), Tristan Platt (St Andrews), Paul Garner (Leeds) and many others, including a number of speakers from abroad such as Manuel Llorca of the Universidad de Chile who spoke on shipwreck survivors and indigenous groups in Patagonia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; José Antonio Sánchez Román of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid who gave a talk based on his book, which deals with the history of taxation in twentieth century Argentina, and is forthcoming in ISA’s Palgrave book series ‘Studies in the Americas’; Roy Hora of Quilmes University in Buenos Aires, who spoke on wealth in nineteenth-century Argentina; Cynthia Milton of the Université de Montréal who presented her work on art and the memory of the Peruvian internal armed conflict (1980-2000); and Alejandro Cañeque of the University of Maryland who spoke on love of the King in the Spanish Empire.

We also organised a number of panels on several topical issues, such as the Argentine elections, back in October 2011, and a panel on drugs and drug-related violence in Mexico, Brazil and Bolivia and on less topical but, as it proved, no less polemical themes such as the 200th anniversary of the Domingo Sarmiento’s birth. These panels brought together in conversation a number of experts, often from different academic disciplines, in a format that encouraged more open debate and engagement with the audience. In what 36

of more than 50, comprised of students, academics, and development policy-makers and practitioners.

Following a lively post-lecture debate, Miguel accompanied ISA staff and students to supper where he entertained us with stories from his longstanding and profound engagement with Latin American peasant and indigenous farmers and social movements. On the following morning, Miguel launched the University of Coventry’s Centre for Agroecology and Food Security, before heading to Westminster where he presented the case for an agroecological approach to rural development to the APPG on Agroecology.

In 2009, ISA established a memorandum of understanding with the World Land Trust, to establish the ISA/WLT Biodiversity Conservation in Latin America Seminar Series. The 2012 Seminar was delivered by Guillermo Harris, President of Fundación Patagonia Natural (FPN), who spoke about ‘Biodiversity Conservation in Estancia La Esperanza, Patagonia’, particularly his work survey and protecting various species of penguin, seal and sea lions. Guillermo’s presentation was videoed and is available as a podcast, which can be accessed from the ISA website.

De Echave, Peru’s former deputy minister for the environment, gave a talk on social conflicts and the mining boom. Both events where organised in collaboration with the Peru Support Group.

2011-12 was also a year marked by several events on transnationalism. In December, a workshop on ‘Transnationalism and Diaspora: Latin American and Caribbean Migration to Canada, Europe and the UK, 1990-2010’, organised by visiting fellow Jean Stubbs, was the point of departure for a day of activities showcasing the very best of transnational and migration research in the UK and elsewhere. It was followed by a panel on Latin American migrants in London, organised by Libia Villazana, another ISA visiting fellow, and by two book launches, Mette Louise Berg’s ‘Diasporic Generations’ and Cathy McIlwaine’s ‘Cross-Border Migration Among Latin Americans’. A follow-up event, on 20 January, also organised by Dr Villazana, brought together Latin American community organiser and media outlets in London. Other book launches organised by ISA included Fred Halliday’s book on Caamaño, William Edmundson’s book on Colonel John Thomas North, the so-called Nitrate There were a number of events focused on Peru. On King, and Natalia Sobrevilla’s book on Andrés de San9 February, ISA was pleased to welcome Dr Héctor ta Cruz.

Béjar, one of Peru’s most eminent intellectuals and a former guerrillero (Ejercito de Liberación Nacional) Other highlights, some of which are discussed elsewho went on the play an important role in the re- where in this newsletter, include the Liberalism in gime of General Juan Velasco (1968-1975). The for- the Americas project, which held several workshops mat, an informal conversation led by Dr Drinot, but and lectures, including a lecture by Professor Linda which included contributions from a diverse audi- Colley, which was organised in collaboration with ence consisting of ISA students, members of faculty the Eccles Centre at the British Library and funded and the general public, proved highly rewarding. Dr by the John Coffin Memorial Fund of the University Béjar gave a fascinating overview of his life, recount- of London, as well as a workshop on the role of Naing his many experiences, from joining the Commu- tional Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in the area nist Party to leaving in disaffection following 1956, of torture prevention, co-hosted with the Human his military training in Cuba and his encounters with Rights Consortium, a fascinating talk on folk saints in Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, his experience in the Argentina, Peru and elsewhere by Frank Graziano of 1965 guerrilla, his years in prison, his participation Connecticut College, a seminar by David Lehman on in the Velasco government, and his interpretation of multi and interculturalism in Mexico, and a lecture the rise of Shining Path. Earlier in the year, Javier Diez on ‘The Falklands Issue’ by Hal Klepak, an ISA visiting Canseco, one of Peru’s leading figures of the Left, and fellow, and renowned expert on international conflict a member of the current congress, gave a lecture on in the region. the Humala administration, while most recently, José 37

United States There was a wide-ranging programme of events on the US in 2011-12. These included the regular University of London US History seminar where topics ranged from colonial slavery through early twentieth century social science development to the rise of twentieth-century Phoenix. The United States Presidency Centre (USPC) also organized a number of panels and seminars that covered historical and contemporary aspects of the presidency.

Other highlights of the year included two book launches. USPC hosted ISA’s very own Matt Hill for an event celebrating the publication of his book on US democracy promotion and followed this up with a launch event for Robert Mason (Edinburgh) to mark the appearance of his history of the Republican Party from Hoover to Reagan.

There were two major public lectures: Mark White delivered the Harry Allen memorial Lecture on the Cuban Missile Crisis fifty years on and Charles Postel (San Francisco State) delivered the James Bryce American Commonwealth address on populism in To mark the launch of the Wiley Blackwell Compan- American politics. ion on Theodore Roosevelt in late November 2011, the USPC put on a panel featuring three of the UK Ian Hart completed his ESRC postdoctoral fellowship contributors to this international project, discussed by delivering a seminar on Nixon’s environmental Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential contribution in policy to the US history seminar, organizing an ISA the field of foreign policy. Shortly afterwards, David panel on the decline of the expert in US politics (with Greenberg of Rutgers visited ISA to speak on Theo- Joe Merton of Nottingham), and organizing an interdore Roosevelt’s invention of the public presidency, national workshop in January 2012 on ‘What Makes offering us insights into his forthcoming book on the Indicators of Societal Progress Politically Successful: making of presidential image in the twentieth cen- Lessons from International History.’ tury. At the end of the spring term, the distinguished political scientist Fred Greenstein of Princeton of- Matt Hill was also very active. In December he interfered a comparison of America’s worst and best pres- viewed former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright idents (James Buchanan, 1857-61, and Abraham Lin- for his Women and American Foreign Policy interview coln, 1861-65) in a USPC-British Library Eccles Centre project and arranged ISA co-sponsorship with LSE joint event. USPC also organized a very well attended Ideas and Wellesley College of her ‘Women Advancdebate on “Is America in Decline?” in early February, ing Democracy Public Address.’ In addition to organfeaturing Adam Quinn (Birmingham) and Iwan Mor- izing his book launch, he also set up a presentation gan (ISA) arguing that it was and Mick Cox and Nick by a former public prosecutor on the death penalty Kitchen (both LSE) opposing the motion. Despite the and arranged through the US Embassy a visit by two brilliance of the Quinn/Morgan case, the audience surviving members of the famed all-black World War somehow ended up evenly divided on the question! II Tusekegee air fighter squadron. The film recording In addition, the USPC ran a series of events focus- for that event makes for compulsive viewing. ing on the US 2012 elections. Economics consultant Phil Mullan gave a riveting presentation on recovery Finally Iwan Morgan co-organized with Simon Newfrom the Great Recession of 2008-09 and its possi- man of Glasgow University a Researching US history ble effect on the election. USPC and the Eccles Cen- training event in Glasgow in March. Held in Glasgow tre ended the year co-hosting with the International and featuring presentations by historians from EdPolitical Consultants Association a symposium on inburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle and ISA, it proved very ‘American Presidential Elections: Model of Democ- successful with early stage doctoral students in introducing them to the ins-and-outs of archival research, racy or Flawed System?’ obtaining travel grant funds, and getting published.

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Alumni Reports Mara Lee graduated from ISA in 2006 with an MSc in United States Politics and Contemporary History.

Last year, she married fellow alumnus Jack Durrell (MSc in Globalisation and Latin American Development - 2005-2007) in California - and they are now living in Washington, D.C. They met at the Welcome Party at ISA in October 2005 - Jack is a native Londoner; she is from California. They have been joined in D.C. by two of their ISA colleagues - both on the Latin American Programme 2005-2006 - and are not only all friends - but are all playing on a “DC Spurs” recreational football team! The alumni are Matt Oberhoffner and James Kilsby.

Professor Susan-Mary Grant was awarded her PhD at ISA in 1995. She is now Professor of American History at Newcastle University. Her book, The Cambridge Concise History of the United States, is due out next month. Further details available here.

Having graduated from ISA with a MA in Latin American Area Studies in 2007, Guy Edwards completed two internships with Fauna and Flora International and the Overseas Development Institute respectively, before going on to work for the consultancy River Path Associates. In 2009 he was invited to Ecuador to work as the resident manager of the Huaorani Ecolodge, as part of an Inter-American Development Bank project to establish sustainable tourism practices. Guy is currently a Research Fellow at Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies where he is managing a research project on the politics of climate change in Latin America. In 2010, in partnership with the Plataforma Climática Latinoamericana, he founded Intercambioclimatico.com, Latin America’s first multilingual website focusing on climate change. His work has been published by Chatham House, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Overseas Development Institute and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network and his most recent publication includes a co-authored chapter on the state of Latin American and European relations in an edited volume on Latin America and globalization (2012). With co-author Professor Timmons Roberts, Brown University, he is currently writing a book on Latin America and climate change for MIT Press.

Graduates are encouraged to keep in contact with the Institute. The Institute has always flourished because it is a community that actively involves those who have been past students.

You can make and maintain contact by: 1. Joining our newly launched facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/Institute-for-the-Study-of-theAmericas/175111945876820 2. Signing up to our email mailing list. We will use this list to let you know about jobs in relevant areas, alumni activities, forthcoming events and publications, and newsletter.

3. Sharing and celebrating your success stories and activities (and publishing your photos) in this newsletter.

4. Attending seminars and conferences offered at the Institute - make sure you’re on the mailing list for the printed programme.

We would like to ask that graduates let us know what they are doing by registering as alumnus of the Institute and its predecessors by completing an alumnus registration form or by emailing americas@sas.ac.uk with their details.

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