Current & Upcoming Events
SALALM LIII: Encounter, Engagement and Exchange: How Native Populations of the Americas Transformed the World (May 30 - June 3, 2008)
Recent Events
In addition to an active series of exhibits, The Latin American Library presents occasional seminars and special events. Recent special events have included:
2008
“Nexos musicoculturales Cuba-Nueva Orleans-Estados Unidos en aspectos medulares de su trasfondo histórico”
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The lecture and presentation was held on Monday, April 28, from 3-4:30 pm in the Latin American Library seminar room located on the 4th floor of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Refreshments followed the talk.
Dr. Orozco is professor, researcher and consultant at the Instituto Cubano de la Música and at the Universidad de las Artes (ISA) in Habana , Cuba. He also directs the Taller Musicológico Multitemático de la Habana for advanced students and scholars. He has published five books and many articles on Cuban and global music, links between Classical European and Latin American music and, more recently, on music and culture within the framework of globalization and post-modernity. The lecture will be delivered in Spanish.
Sinopsis : La investigación del Dr. Orozco se concentra en aspectos músico-culturales con géneros muy diversos (no sólo alrededor del jazz), que han sido poco estudiados en los nexos históricos entre los contextos culturales de Cuba- New Orleans-Estados Unidos. No se trata simplemente de músicas, cantares o elementos de la danza (de diversa procedencia y estrato) que se suceden a lo largo del tiempo en determinado espacio. Más bien trata de focos o núcleos de inter -relaciones, e incluso de la dinámica de contradicciones en el contacto o toma de fuentes, asimilación, invención y recreación de rasgos y perfiles musicales, sus funciones y trasfondo sociocultural, incidencias sociopolíticas concomitantes, y otros factores sicoculturales. Estos no representan un cúmulo lineal y progresivo, sino vías por las que estas diversas músicas adquieren un sentido, impronta identitaria, y, a través de la reconversión, apropiación y resignificaciones de los mismos protagonistas, alcanzan determinada trascendencia aún en la modernidad global, respecto a cada contexto específico y a sus posibles multi -proyecciones.
This event was made possible through an endowment from Tulane Emeritus Professor Richard E. Greenleaf.
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“ Belize and the Central American Federation, 1821-1839”
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The lecture was held on Tuesday, April 29, from 3-4pm in the Latin American Library seminar room located on the 4th floor of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Refreshments followed the talk.
The copious literature on the territorial dispute between Guatemala and Belize focuses considerable attention on Guatemala 's mid-1940s declaration that its 1859 boundary treaty with Great Britain was “null and void.” However, recently Guatemala shifted the basis of its stance, arguing that half of Belize was an integral part of Verapaz and that, after 1821, Belize came under the jurisdiction of the Central American Federation and then later the Republic of Guatemala. Given that recent works have allotted little attention to the pre-1859 period, a study of the status of Belize in relation to the Federation is needed to fill a gap and shed light on Guatemala 's new contention.
After providing an update on the recent efforts to resolve the long-standing border dispute, Dr. Byrd will examine Guatemala 's recent contention that Belize was a part of Verapaz and, by extension, the Audiencia of Guatemala, and review the relationship that developed between Belize and the Central American Federation.
Dr. Byrd has been an Assistant Professor of Belizean History and Education Studies at the University of Belize since 2005. Before that he served for many years as editor and then co-editor of Belizean Studies, the country's leading academic journal, and as an administrator at St. John's College.
This event was made possible through an endowment from Tulane Emeritus Professor Richard E. Greenleaf.
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"Social Experiments and Indigenous Education in Mexico" |
Marco Calderón, El Colegio de Michoacán
Richard E. Greenleaf Library Fellow
Friday March 14, 3:30 - 5 PM, The Latin American Library Seminar Room
An informal talk on on his work in progress titled "Social Experiments and Indigenous Education in Mexico"
Marco Calderón is professor and researcher at the Centro de Estudios Antropológicos, El Colegio de Michoacán, México. He holds a Ph.D in Anthropology from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa, Mexico City, with a dissertation on History and Political Processes in Cheran and Sierra P'urhepecha. He has published widely on political violence and local elections in Mexico, and on political culture and state transformation in Latin America. In 2002-03 he was a visiting scholar in History at Cambridge University at the Center for Latin American Studies.
Social Experiments and Indigenous Education in Mexico
From 1932 to 1933, Mexico 's Department of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública , SEP) financed a social experiment in the indigenous town of Carapan (state of Michoacán). Despite its short lifespan, the “Experimental Station” at Carapan became an emblem of the history of “culturalist indigenism” throughout Latin America due, in part, to the publication of Moisés Sáenz' book: Carapan: bosquejo de una experiencia, in 1936. Carapan became a “social laboratory” where researchers sought to find suitable methods for integrating indigenous peoples into the Mexican state and nation. Much less well-known is the experience in Actopan, a village in the Mezquital Valley (state of Hidalgo ), where the SEP funded a similar venture. In 1928, a “Permanent Cultural Mission” was set up in Actopan and, in 1931, Carlos Basauri carried out several research projects there, on such topics as culture, folklore and nutrition, among others. At that time, Sáenz was traveling through Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, also looking for methods to effectuate the incorporation of Indian peoples. These two figures were part of the SEP's “Commission for Indigenous Research” (Comisión de Investigaciones Indígenas). Upon his return to Mexico, Sáenz led the Carapan project, in collaboration with Basauri and other notable intellectuals of the time, including José Miguel Othón de Mendizábal. An important antecedent of this history was the program of “Integrated Development” that Manuel Gamio had directed in the Teotihuacan Valley in the late 1910s; a second significant precedent was the John Geddis Gray Memorial Expedition of 1928, a project co-financed by Tulane University and the SEP, in which Basauri also participated.
The objective of my current research is to write a book on education and indigenism in Mexico, based on the concept of these “social experiments”. Such a reconstruction must take into account several elements in order to constitute a true contribution to our knowledge of the history of the organization of cultural differences during the period of Mexican “populism”. Of course, it is necessary to identify the SEP's policies in the context of the cultural change associated with the conformation of the post-revolutionary state. Although a certain consensus did exist at that time on the social and cultural origins of “backwardness” and the “Indian problem”, some of the theories and even some of the indigenists' practices were clearly racist. Other topics to be included in this analysis are the theoretical influences that supported Basauri's and Sáenz' “civilizing proposals” and the wider political context in which these experiments were carried out, given that the existing power relationships influenced the course they would follow.
One other important aspect of this history concerns North American influences on rural education in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s, when several educators and pedagogues from the United States visited rural schools and cultural missions to study Mexican experiences in “schooling the masses”. The SEP's archives hold a wealth of data on this topic. The most distinguished visitor was John Dewey, who had the opportunity to visit one cultural mission, after which he went so far as to state that Mexico was the country where his educational proposals were best being put into practice!
This event was made possible through an endowment from Tulane Emeritus Professor Richard E. Greenleaf.
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2007
Shooting a Revolution: Photographs from Cuba (Nov. 9 - 20)
"Collecting in Cuba: Art from an Embargoed Nation" Talk by Sandra Levinson (Nov. 9)
Fall 2007 Open House and Second annual Book Sale (PDF)
Friday, September 28, 2007
2006
"Latinos and the Media" Town Hall Meeting
Also included an exhibit on the history of the Spanish-language press in New Orleans.
Fall 2006 Open House and First Annual Latin American Library Book Sale
Lectures, Reception and Book Signing (May 19th)
- "Overlapping Freedom Struggles: The Cuban Wars for Independence and the Search for Public Rights in Louisiana, 1863-1898" by Rebecca J. Scott, University of Michigan
- "The Haitian Revolution and the Sale of Louisiana; Or, Thomas Jefferson's (Unpaid) Debt to Jean-Jacques Dessalines" by Laurent Dubois, Michigan State University
2005
Spring 2005 Lectures
Andeanist historian Kathryn Burns, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
- "Reading Notarial Truth: Peru's Colonial Archives"
- "Making Indigenous Archives"
January 2005 Lecture
Latin American historian James Lockhart,
Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA
- "Sources and Methods of the New Philology"
2004
Honduras Reception
Co-hosted by the Honduras Consulate in New Orleans. Fall 2004.
Reception to celebrate the opening of the "Maestros de Plata" Exhibit
The Exhbit,
curated by Penny Morrill, was displayed at Tulane University's Newcomb Gallery.
The library also featured a concurrent exhibit, William Spratling: Sketches from Mexico from March 4th through the 26th. Morrill was also an invited speaker at the Latin American Library with a talk on Spratling silver on Friday, March 5th.
Seminar on the History of the Book in Latin America
Pedro Guibovich Pérez of Princeton University
Opening reception for the the exhibit Reinventing Carnival in the Americas
2003
Reception to Celebrate the Renovation of the Latin American Library
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