Letter from the Director

Dear Friends,

I hope you and yours are well as we approach the end of the year. I write to share the Latin American and Iberian Institute’s 2021-2022 Annual Report. As in previous years, the content demonstrates why UNM continues to be a national leader in Latin American and Iberian studies in the US.

Much of our strength comes from the over 160 UNM faculty affiliated with the LAII who do research and/or teach about these world areas and their languages. Two dynamic new Brazilianists joined their ranks in 2021, Andreas Hernández (Sustainability Studies) and Jessica Carey Webb (Spanish and Portuguese, profile on page 9), and both have already added tremendously to Latin American studies at UNM. LAII affiliated faculty host visiting scholars and give public lectures, teach and mentor students, publish widely, and are recognized nationally and internationally for their research (see profiles of Luis Herrán Ávila and Rosa Vallejos on pages 11 and 16). They also attract and train outstanding graduate students who go on to contribute to a wide range of professions and fields, and who become the next generation of specialists in Latin America and Iberia (see profile of distinguished alumna Suzanne Schadl on page 18).

The LAII is honored to administer over $750,000 per year in support for these students. This includes funding from a US Department of Education Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant that we were awarded in the summer of 2022. The FLAS grant will provide over $970,000 over the next four years in fellowships to graduate and undergraduate students to study less commonly taught Latin American languages and area studies. The first cohort of (very happy!) FLAS fellows is being funded in the 2022-2023 academic year, and future opportunities include summer fellowships to study languages abroad.

The LAII also provides field grants for graduate student research in Latin America, PhD fellowships, and graduate assistantships and emergency scholarships for students in the Latin American Studies program. The great majority of the funding for these awards comes from the state of New Mexico, augmented by endowments and gifts. In recent years, available funds have not gone as far due to inflation and the sharp increase in housing costs in Albuquerque. We continue to seek and apply for other sources of support for students such as the FLAS grant. If you are able, we hope you will consider a gift to benefit students studying Latin America and Iberia at UNM, through the LAII Student Field Research Grant Fund, the Latin American Studies Scholarship Fund, or the establishment of a named scholarship.

A large part of the LAII mission is outreach, and we sponsor or co-sponsor a wide range of lectures (see page 28), workshops, and campus and community events highlighting Latin American and Iberian culture such as our lecture series with UNM Press, the Festival Flamenco (organized by the National Institute of Flamenco), Cine Magnífico (organized by the Instituto Cervantes), and the world music festival, Globalquerque.

In addition to these activities, the LAII has a vibrant K-12 outreach program (see page 29) that includes professional workshops for educators on compelling and timely topics, the creation and sharing of curricular material online, and the Vamos a Leer blog, which highlights culturally responsive children’s literature in English and Spanish. The blog and online curricular resources are widely accessed and appreciated, with over 50,000 downloads since 2019, with demand

I’d like to close by thanking all those who supported the LAII in 2021-2022: the wonderful LAII staff and graduate and front office assistants (the hardworking faculty members of our advisory committees, LAII faculty affiliates who contributed to programming, and any and all of you who engaged with the LAII by attending LAII events in person or online (or viewed recordings on our YouTube channel) or supported our mission through your donations. Thank you, I wish you all a happy and healthy 2023, and hope to see you soon at an LAII event!

Frances Hayashida Director, Latin American & Iberian Institute Professor of Anthropology The University of New Mexico