When graduate student Duff Morton paid a visit last year to the Brazilian village he had been studying since 2005, he discovered that after three years it had taken a turn for the better. The 23 local families no longer lived in shacks built with sticks and plastic sheeting. Their new homes were made of cinder blocks and tin roofs, each with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room.
“The government had promised them for years and finally they were built,” Morton says. He also found that more children in the northeastern village were going to school and their health was improving.
Studying how communities can emerge from poverty is a major focus of Morton’s work through the University of Chicago’s Center for Latin American Studies, a community of scholars from various disciplines who share a commitment to advancing research on the region. The center’s offerings include fieldwork, lectures, conferences, and exchanges that allow scholars to pursue research on indigenous languages, history, and contemporary Latin American culture.
“I’m studying the impact of a government program to fight poverty by paying families the equivalent of $1 per day for each family member, if the children go to school and get health check-ups,” says Morton, a graduate student in Anthropology and the School of Social Service Administration.
Broadening Perspectives on Future of Amazon
Morton and many of his colleagues attended a November conference at the University, “Environmental Policy, Social Movements, and Science for the Brazilian Amazon,” organized by Manuela Carneiro da Cuhna, Professor Emerita in Anthropology. The conference reflected the many ways the CLAS brings together scholars and policymakers to discuss important issues.
“For us, the boundaries of scholarship do not stop at the border,” says Emilio Kouri, Associate Professor in History and Director of the Katz Center for Mexican Studies.“We have had a long history of transnational scholarship, and Manuela is an example of that work.”
The conference gave Morton a chance to gain a broader perspective on how the issues of the environment and development, often in conflict, play out in the Amazon.
“People in Brazil have exciting ideas about how to resolve that conflict,” he says, such as developing a forest economy based on the sustainable production of nuts and rubber, and rewarding people in the region for their contributions to preserving a rainforest that could help slow global warming.
Morton says he’s gained a new appreciation for the role indigenous groups play in preservation through their intimate familiarity with the Amazon. “This conference really opened my eyes to the importance of traditional knowledge and the need to transfer that knowledge to others,” says Morton.
Learning how the Amazon’s resources can be used in a sustainable way, while also respecting local customs, is an important theme of Carneiro da Cuhna’s work as well as the conference she organized.
As president of the Brazilian Anthropological Association and a board member of the Brazilian Science Council, she has worked for the rights of Brazil’s indigenous peoples. She helped lead a coalition of academic institutions in supporting a constitutional chapter that guaranteed extensive land rights for traditional peoples. She also has studied the lives of traditional rubber tappers living in a reserve in the Juruá River basin in western Brazil, where families extract rubber-making materials from rainforest trees just as their ancestors have done for the past century.
Academic Connections that Cross Disciplines and Borders
For specialists at Chicago, collaborating with Latin American colleagues who serve as visiting professors or guest lecturers provides academic connections that fuel their research.
“I think something that has distinguished the work on Latin America here is that we are able to provide deeper insights throughout scholarship and point out new ways of looking at the cultures. That is a reason why the work is so exceptional,” says Dain Borges, Associate Professor in History and Director of the CLAS.
Friedrich Katz, the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in History, is an excellent example of someone capable of making that kind of path-breaking contribution, says Borges. As a scholar who grew up in Mexico, Katz received much acclaim there for his work, which has positioned the country’s history in a larger context and given people a better understanding of their celebrated hero Pancho Villa.
“Mexicans had thought of Villa as a mythical revolutionary leader, but in many ways, Friedrich was able to point out that he had a vision of Mexico as a country that would be modernized in its own way to become a democratic state,” Borges says.
Recognition for Katz’s work has come from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. His book, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa, received numerous awards and in 2004, the University honored Katz by naming the Mexican studies program the Katz Center for Mexican Studies. To celebrate the naming, the University welcomed former President of Mexico Vicente Fox, Mexican dignitaries, and leaders of Chicago’s Mexican-American community.
The creation of new connections continue between Latin America and Chicago, as the University formalizes a new link this fall with Mexico’s leading academic center, the Colegio de Mexico, and expands a program on the study of slavery in Brazil for Chicago teachers through the city’s Newberry Library.
“I think the really exciting part of the work we do is the collaborations with others,” says Borges. “That’s the kind of research that drew me here and makes me excited to be part of the Center for Latin American Studies at Chicago.”
By William Harms
