Latin American Research Expands

Latin American Research Expands

BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY
Rice News Staff
March 19, 1998

Latin America is an area of expanding research at Rice, in which scholars are
delving into a variety of subjects such as early Portuguese exploration, the
intellectual political life of Mexico, and the role of the automobile in Brazil.

Latin America generates excitement among students and faculty alike because
of the growing importance of the region to Houston and the United States, say
Rice scholars. Part of that importance lies in the shifting demographics of
Houston, where the longtime Anglo culture is melding with a growing Latin American
population. The rate of change is astounding.

In the fall of 1996, Stephen Klineberg, Rice professor of sociology, released
the results of his annual Houston-area survey, which revealed what he called
a demographic "revolution" in Houston. Klineberg determined that from
1980 to 2000 the Anglo population in the city of Houston is expected to decline
from 52 percent to less than 29 percent. By 2000, Hispanics will be the largest
ethnic community in Houston at 39 percent: The group made up less than 18 percent
of the city’s population in 1980.

The demographic shift should not be a great surprise. So it seems like a statement
of the obvious when members of the faculty like Maarten van Delden, an associate
professor of Hispanic and classical studies, point out that Houston is like
a gateway to Latin America.

"I think it is the general expectation that this is not a transitory trend,
but that this is a development that is likely to continue," van Delden
said.

"We’re living in an increasingly interconnected world, and so it becomes
more and more important for universities to reflect that on the undergraduate
and graduate level."

Judith Brown, dean of the School of Humanities, is encouraging more scholarly
interest in Latin America.

"The cultures and societies of Latin America are of growing importance
and fascination to the U.S. and to border states like Texas," Brown said.
"For this reason, we want to bring to our faculty more scholars interested
in Latin America and to offer more courses in the field. We have just received
a challenge grant from the Mellon Foundation to create a chair in Latin American
art. To raise the funds and fill that position will be a major priority for
the School of Humanities."

Rice is fortunate to have one of the leading historians of Latin America on
the faculty, Brown said. She points to Patricia Seed, professor of history,
as an ideal scholar.

Seed is the author of numerous articles and books on topics ranging from the
early explorations by Spain to issues of class and race in the colonial period.
Her book "To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico" (Stanford University
Press, 1988) received the 1989 Herbert Eugene Bolton Prize for the best book
on Latin America by the American Historical Association.

One of Seed’s newest projects takes advantage of the World Wide Web. She created
a Web site titled "Latitudes: The Art and Science of Fifteenth Century
Navigation." "Latitudes" offers insights into "how the Portuguese
invented the science of navigation in the 1400s and how it changed the world."
Topics on the site include traditional sailing, traditional astronomy, coastal
navigation, ocean currents and weather, the Earth’s magnetism, ships, beacons,
maps, compass roses, calendars, math in maps, and latitude and longitude. The
Web site can be seen at http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~feegi/.

The "Latitude" Web site has information on navigation during the
period of the great Portuguese explorations. Topics include early maps, coastal
navigation, ships and beacons.

Her current research interests include working on a three-volume comparative
history of European colonialism in the New World.

Latin American scholars at Rice are also studying the modern period.

Joel Wolfe, associate professor of history, has focused his scholarly interests
on modern Brazil. In 1993, he published a book titled "Working Women, Working
Men: São Paulo and the Rise of Brazil’s Industrial Working Class, 1900-1955"
(Duke University Press, 1993).

Wolfe traveled to Brazil in the late 1980s soon after the end of a 20-year
military dictatorship.

"There was a real feeling of euphoria," Wolfe said of Brazil in the
late ’80s. "I was able to look at everything from union records to industrialist
records. [The book] is really a product of the time I wrote it, which was a
period of great openness and hopefulness for workers, women and poor people
in shaping Brazilian democracy. It was an extraordinary time."

Now, Wolfe has turned his attention to the Brazilians’ love for the automobile.
The auto in Brazil is the topic of his next book, which focuses on the making
of a modern nation.

"At the turn of the century and to the mid-1950s, [Brazilians] really
embraced technology," Wolfe said. "The technology they embraced the
most was the automobile. Brazilians have a love affair with cars that probably
exceeds Americans’ love affair with the auto. When [Ayrton Senna] a famous Brazilian
racer died in a car crash in Italy during a race É his funeral was the
largest public event in the history of Brazil–larger than the funeral for [Tansredo
Neves] the man who led the country out of military dictatorship in 1985.

If you do not understand the culture, society and politics of Brazil, then
you cannot understand Latin American history, Wolfe said. He points to the huge
U.S. economic presence in Brazil, and the fact that Brazil is the second largest
country by population in the western hemisphere after the United States.

Wolfe has an anecdote about how branches of the U.S. government imagine Latin
America.

"For the U.S. military, the map of Latin America is this big island of
Haiti and nothing else," he said. "To the people who study drugs it’s
just Colombia and Peru. For the people who study immigration and trade it’s
just this hulking Mexico. We all have our biases of how we understand the region.
It is easy and important for us to think about Mexico, and it is easy and bad
for us to forget about Brazil."

The people of Mexico will always play a large role in the life and culture
of the southwestern United States. Take Carlos Fuentes, a leading novelist and
political writer from Mexico and the subject of a new book by van Delden.

"Carlos Fuentes, Mexico and Modernity" (Vanderbilt University Press,
1998) is a study of the work and career of Fuentes, van Delden said.

The major contribution van Delden makes in the book is to look not only at
Fuentes the novelist and writer but also at Fuentes’ political career.

Fuentes started contributing to a variety of journals on political topics from
the beginning of his career and as early as the Cuban revolution. He is still
a frequent contributor of political comment to papers such as El Páis,
an important Spanish daily newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles
Times and the New York Times.

Fuentes is a complicated man and writer, said van Delden. There is a tension
between Fuentes’ fiction, which is often difficult and experimental, and his
journalism, through which as an intellectual he used to speak out on social
and political topics of the day. There is also a tension between Fuentes’ desire
to present himself as a spokesman and defender of Mexico’s cultural and national
identity and his desire to be a cosmopolitan man of the world who could help
integrate Mexico into the world.

Van Delden said his book is not just a study of Fuentes; it is also a case
study of the role of the writer in a Latin American country. Writers in Latin
America fulfill a role that is different than that of writers in the United
States.

"Writers in Latin America feel compelled to participate in political debate
and political processes more than writers in the U.S. and Europe," he said.
"That is a tradition going back to the 19th century. Even as recently as
1990, Peru’s most prominent novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, ran for president
and almost won."

Fuentes not only wrote and continues to write for political publications and
newspapers, but he also served as Mexico’s ambassador to France in the 1970s.

Van Delden’s interest in the life of Fuentes has led him to explore the role
of the intellectuals surrounding the variety of political journals in Mexico
from 1960 to the present.

"It centers on the problem of democracy," van Delden said. "If
you look at Mexican intellectual debates of the last 30 years or so you can
see them as reflections on the struggle to achieve greater democracy in Mexico."

Latin American writers like Fuentes fascinate many students at Rice, said Lane
Kauffmann, associate professor of Hispanic and classical studies and chair of
that department.

"To state it flatly," Kauffmann said, "there’s been a boom in
Latin American literature. There have been five Nobel Prize winners in literature
from Latin America since World War II. That boom arguably has been the most
significant development in world literature of the last half century. Student
interest in Latin American literature has followed suit, so it only makes sense
for us to accommodate that growing interest without losing sight of Peninsular
Spanish literature."

One way Kauffmann sees of doing that is to increase the number of courses on
Latin America in Hispanic and classical studies.

The department will probably increase the number of faculty with expertise
in Latin America to three full-time positions by switching one of the current
faculty positions from Peninsular Spanish to Latin America, Kauffmann said.

Students interested in Latin America can gain firsthand experience by participating
in Rice’s "Fall Semester in Chile," which has been in effect since
1989. The annual semester is held in Santiago at the University of Chile Faculdad
de Filosofì y Humanidades. The academic benefits for students include
studying and competing with Chilean students in their own environment, benefiting
from the expertise of University of Chile professors, and improving their command
of the Spanish language. "[Students] are integrated into Chilean family
life, get to travel extensively, and enjoy many cultural activities," said
Joan Rea, associate professor of Hispanic and classical studies and director
of the program. "This year, for example, students in my Contemporary Latin
American Theatre seminar will not only continue to attend productions on a regular
basis, they will also be working in mini-workshops with professionals from the
Chilean stage in an unique intercultural exchange."

Students in the program can earn Rice credits in art, Spanish American literature,
Latin American history, political science, chemistry, biology and other areas.
Starting in 1998, the program will offer fall-semester internships with banks,
a law firm and a computer company, Rea said.

Latin American studies is not unrelated to life in the United States. The border
between Mexico and the United States is not a line of demarcation. On paper
the border may be clear, but culturally the lines are blurring. Hispanic culture
has been a major influence in the Southwestern United States since the 1500s.
And scholars like José Aranda, assistant professor of English, are investigating
how Hispanic culture has made an impact on the United States before and after
the Mexican-American War.

Aranda is involved with two book projects. The first is based on the idea that
since 1848, the year of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Hispanic writers have
been making important contributions to North American and Latin American literature
as a whole.