November 2024 Newsletter

Dear Latin Americanist Community,

  Thank you all who attended the LAI fall reception last week. It was a wonderful event that lifted our spirits and, as it always does, strengthened our sense of community. Special thanks to the LAI staff and our undergraduate interns who planned and made the event a success. This year, Alicia Maher, a proud UCLA alumna (‘92) and a Gourmand award winner author, donated a copy of her book Delicious El Salvador and a cooking class for four people, which we raffled during the gathering. Congratulations to the raffle’s lucky winners and many thanks to Alicia for her enthusiastic support!

With this newsletter, we bring you two contributions to the LAI blog. Prof. Robin Derby (History) writes about the falsehoods leveled against Haitian immigrants as ‘pet eaters,’ promoted by the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Prof. Derby connects the controversy to the long history of stigmatization and oppression of Haiti and Haitian immigrants after this Caribbean nation defeated French colonialism and abolished slavery. Sam Brandt, a recent Geography PhD and currently a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, analyzes housing initiatives for Uruguay’s rural poor, highlighting the successful case of MEVIR, first a movement and now a parastate agency. Thank you, Robin and Sam, for your excellent contributions to the LAI blog!

Looking at the events calendar for November, we are happily facing an ‘embarrassment of riches’ situation. We have multiple talks on Brazil, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean across various disciplines. We continue our collaboration with the UC Press journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos’s annual lecture. This year Prof. Kevin Terraciano (History), former director of the LAI and distinguished scholar of colonial Mexico, will deliver the journal’s annual lecture on The Digitized Florentine Codex: Indigenous Voices of Mexico in the Digital Age. This hybrid event will take place on November 7, and you can register here.

On November 18, our own Bryan Pitts, assistant director of the LAI, will lead two information sessions for students interested in applying for a FLAS fellowship. Check out the LAI calendar for details. We are also offering travel grants to LAI-affiliated faculty attending conferences and conducting other types of scholarly work domestically and internationally. Look up the details here. Finally, UCLA’s Fowler Museum, in collaboration with LACMA, presents the exhibit Taming the Desert: Resilience, Religion, and Ancestors in Ancient Peru. The exhibition opens November 10 at the Fowler.

Please consider giving to the mission of the UCLA Latin American Institute and its centers, programs, and working groups. Your generous contributions support the lively intellectual life of the institute, student research, and our vibrant outreach activities. Thanks!

Rubén Hernández-León,
Director of the UCLA Latin American Institute