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Subscribe to LACYORK, CERLAC’s informational listserv for news, analysis, resources, job opportunities, and event announcements related to Latin America and the Caribbean.
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La Arucanía: Reflections of a Graduate Student |
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La Araucanía Reflections of a Graduate Student in Chile By Tim Clark La Araucanía, or Region IX, marks the Chilean political, economic, and cultural frontier. Its capital of Temuco, the axis of political and economic power in Southern Chile, is a tale of two cities, combining modern governmental and commercial buildings and urban sprawl with horse-powered transportation and the thick smoke that lines the evening skies from the woodstoves that heat its homes. In many ways, La Araucanía represents the manifold contradictions of contemporary Chile: the despoiled beauty of its rich natural-resource base and rugged rural landscapes; its elitist German colonists and its humble Mapuche colonies; and its cries for social justice, drowned out by the promises of corporate investors and their snake oil of debt-fuelled development. I arrived in Temuco at the end of May, 2003, a Canadian graduate student under-armed with the abstract language and concepts of the university system to grasp the complexity of a region scarred by decades of colonial, class, ethnic, gender, and geographic division. Under the aegis of CERLAC’s “Temuco Project,” I set out to investigate the effects of the rapid capitalist transformation of the past four decades on the food security of the rural Mapuche households that still comprise and define the rural spaces of Region IX. I had been warned in advance, by those familiar with of the region, of the enormous challenges that faced foreign researchers in La Araucanía: the simmering and explosive ethnic tension; the ideological hegemony of neoliberal capitalism; and the dense and occasionally bizarre Spanish that dots its rolling and diverse linguistic landscape. But the manifold challenges of the region proved in the end a blessing in disguise, because they helped me to realize that the real learning experience was to be found not in the ends of the research but in its means. Fieldwork as a random encounter with the world beyond the university represents the ultimate challenge and expression of the academic life and enterprise. There our intellectual world is stripped bare of its pretensions and suppositions. There academics confront their own ignorance and indifference. There academic life loses all its meaning and value. To abandon the physical and intellectual comforts of the office or classroom and engage in a meaningful fashion those who hold opinions and perspectives entirely foreign to our own is the most genuine expression of what we fraternally call “collegiality.” But entrance to this college is not defined by class, race, or gender, or by institutional conformity or acquiescence. It is a college to which we all belong but rarely perceive. It is not the college of the “global village,” of an easy cosmopolitanism. It is a college where we learn that our differences are the only things that divide us, and the only things that may one day unite us. My debt to the “Temuco Project” and its Canadian and Chilean collaborators is not for the thesis with which I returned and obtained my degree; it is for providing me the opportunity to situate my academic work into a broader perspective, and understand that it should never be an end unto itself, only a means. See also an update of the Temuco Project. Tim Clark works with the Registro de Chilenos en el Exterior, Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas, Santiago, Chile. The period of his fieldwork was June 2003-February 2004; the work was carried out under the aegis, and with the support, of the Temuco Project. The title of his thesis was "The Cultural Foundations of Food Security: Power and Reproduction in Ayjarewe, Chile."
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Graduate Student News Thor Burnham (PhD candidate, History). After completing research in Haiti, Thor is currently writing his dissertation on the topic of 19th Century Haitian History. Lyse Hébert (PhD candidate, Humanities). Lyse’s field of research is Cuba: Identity and Discourse. Julia E. Murphy (PhD, Social Anthropology). Julia’s dissertation, “Ethnography and Sustainable Development in the Calakmul Model Forest, Mexico”, was defended in March 2003. She is now a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, University of Calgary. Miguel Gonzalez (PhD Candidate, Political Science). Miguel’s fields of research include comparative politics, indigenous social movements in Latin America, and indigenous and multiethnic autonomy. He is completing his PhD Dissertation project: Governing Multi-ethnic Societies in Latin America: Regional Autonomy, Democracy, and the State in Nicaragua, 1987-2005. See his profile on page 19. Dolores Figueroa Romero (PhD Candidate, Sociology). Dolores continues her research on Indigenous women’s participation in Local Politics and Community Development. She has been writing and presenting papers on this topic, is currently finishing her comprehensive examinations and in May 2005 will begin her fieldwork in Ecuador and Nicaragua. Shana Yael Shubs (MES candidate, Environmental Studies) returned from 6 months of research and activism in Argentina. She is now writing her major research paper on the cultural politics of social change in Argentina and is working as the Administrative Assistant of CERLAC. CERLAC invites all Graduate Diploma Program students to submit updates for the next CERLAC newsletter!
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Latin American and Caribbean Studies Diploma Recipients The Graduate Diploma Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies is available to students registered in a Master's or Doctoral program at York who have a strong interest in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The diploma is completed in conjunction with another discipline and allows students to pursue more focused research on issues of interest in the region. CERLAC would like to extend its congratulations to the following students who successfully completed the diploma in 2001-2004, we wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours! Lizeth Alvarez. MES Environmental Studies. Participatory Community Organizing in Guatemala. Completion date April 02. Christos Astaras. MES Environmental Studies. Community Based Design of a buffer zone management plan for "Los Cusingos Neotropical Bird Sanctuary, Costa Rica". Completion date January 03. Maria del Carmen Carrero de Salazar. MA Education. Work Education and Low Income Students in Peru. Completion date April 02. Tim Clark. MA Political Science. The Cultural Foundations of Food Security. Completion date October 04. Eileen Harrington. MES Environmental Studies. Development of an Environmental Education Program to promote Shade and Organic Coffee. Completion date December 02. Christine McKenzie. MES Environmental Studies. Popular Communication: Collectivizing Movements for Change on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. Completion date February 03. Information on the Graduate Diploma Program is available online.
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Graduate Student Profile: Aaron Kamugisha By Mike Ambach Aaron Kamugisha was born in Tanzania and grew up in Barbados. Aaron’s path has been interdisciplinary from early on in his academic career. With an undergraduate degree in Business from the University of the West Indies, a growing interest in political philosophy led him to pursue graduate studies in Political Science. During an influential year at the University of California at Berkeley, he combined his Caribbean experiences with emerging debate around the complexity of the African diaspora. After completing his MA in Barbados, he moved to Toronto in 2002 to begin York University’s PhD program in Social and Political Thought. Having lived and studied in several countries over the past few years, York University is just the latest in a series of experiences that have afforded Aaron a broad-based and critical perspective. Aaron is the graduate-level recipient of the 2003 CERLAC Michael Baptista Prize for his essay Reading Said and Wynter on Liberation and the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition. He has presented his research through CERLAC’s seminar series and at numerous conferences throughout the Americas and in the U.K., and his work has been published in various academic journals. His current research deals with the complexities of citizenship, power and domination in post-colonial Anglophone Caribbean. Beyond conventional literary and political analysis, he explores how the post-independence Caribbean elite has manifested newer and very situated forms of state dominance and oppression in the wake of the neoliberal consensus, the disillusionment of the political left and the legacy of colonization. Aaron is also the editor of Proudflesh, an electronic journal that promotes awareness and dialogue around Black life, its culture and politics. The breadth of Aaron’s work and his ability to articulate it is impressive. Pressed to identify key events and influences, he cites his diverse life experience, his time at UC Berkeley, and the work of C.L.R. James and Sylvia Wynter. As for the future, Aaron hopes through his work to shape new possibilities for community in the Caribbean beyond the limits and inequities of colonial/neocolonial structures.
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Graduate Student Profile: Miguel Gonzalez By John Carlaw From the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua to York University, fourth year political science Ph.D candidate Miguel Gonzalez continues to be a strong contributor to education in Canada and his native land. Beginning as a graduate assistant at CERLAC in 2000, Miguel’s involvement at York has continually grown, deeply involving himself in many initiatives, including CERLAC’s Rural Community Development Group (RCDG) and the Urban Poverty Project. He now serves as one of the coordinators with the multidisciplinary University Consortium on the Global South (UCGS), a new project that seeks to bring together scholars interested in issues of relevance to the global south. More than just a participant in these activities, Miguel “has been a driving force” and a “most pleasant person to work with,” according to CERLAC Fellow and professor Ricardo Grinspun. Miguel’s interest in international development and politics comes from growing up on the Caribbean coast of revolutionary Nicaragua, where he was a “very active member” of the Sandinista Youth. There he joined the military as a volunteer for two and a half years, an experience he says had “a lasting impact on my life, where I was confronted with conflicts within the revolution.” Despite certain successes, he “could see contradictions between the revolution and the historical claims of the indigenous people,” such as questions of “democracy, emancipation, and how multi-ethnic democracy can be built in the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua,” which he addresses in his own research. Miguel currently studies the Autonomous Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, whose governance structures were created in 1987 by the Sandinista government. He is passionate about examining the “contradictions and challenges that autonomy faces in the light of a neoliberal state and neoliberal governments” in Nicaragua. At York he has found professors and students “who have provided new questions about the process, to explore it more deeply.” Miguel’s commitment to Nicaragua has not waned while studying in Canada. Each summer he returns to Nicaragua to teach at the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Carribean (URACCAN) where he worked for several years prior to his graduate studies at York. He is proud of the fact that the school recently graduated twenty-five professionals, many of whom were community leaders nine years ago when he began to work at URACCAN. Miguel notes that even with few resources, “if you have the interest of the community and the need for higher education and high expectations of your work, you can do good things.” Fortunately for CERLAC and the York community as a whole, we have benefited a great deal from Miguel’s hard work, creativity and scholarship.
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Congratulations to the winners of the Baptista Essay Prize!! 2002 The 2002 Undergraduate-level Baptista Essay Prize was awarded to Jasmin Hristov for her paper, Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism in Argentina: Unrevealed Connections. The graduate-level prize was awarded to Scott Pearce, for his paper Fueling War: The Impact of Canadian Oil Investment on the Conflict in Colombia. Scott's paper is available as a CERLAC Working Paper.
The Michael Baptista Essay Prize was established by the friends of Michael Baptista and the Royal Bank of Canada, in honour of Michael Baptista and in recognition of the areas central to his spirit and success: the importance of his Guyanese / Caribbean roots, his dedication to and outstanding achievement at the Royal Bank of Canada, and his continued and unqualified drive and love of learning. This $500 Prize is awarded annually to both a graduate and an undergraduate student at York University in recognition of an outstanding scholarly essay of relevance to the area of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, from a humanities, social science, business or legal perspective. Evaluators were consistently impressed with the quality of the submissions overall, and the superb quality of the winning essays. |
