Tag: Latin American Studies Association
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Black Feminist Epistemologies: Learning with Sueli Carneiro
BEING A GRADUATE STUDENT is not easy, especially in a prestigious program such as the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In spring 2023, the authors, along with fellow Brazilian students, were talking about the challenges with Dr. Christen Smith, our adviser, and she said, “I…
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Making Beauty: The Wearing of Polleras in the Andean Altiplano
BY ANGELA TAPIA ARCE Lucy does not smile too often. Like other women who wear polleras, she does not greet you with a wide grin, unless you are more than an acquaintance. Yet, when Lucy smiles the stars twinkle, whether or not the sun is overhead. She has two little silver stars inlaid into her…
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On the Road with Barbara Hines: UT Students Visit Karnes Family Detention Facility
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT BY SUSANNA SHARPE It’s 7:30 on a Saturday morning. Barbara Hines has parked a large white van outside the law school at The University of Texas at Austin. Inside a small hallway of the school, a slightly sleepy group of students begins to assemble. Some are law students, others are master’s students in…
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Anzaldúa across Borders: A Traveling Thought Gallery
BY SUSANNA SHARPE An image is a bridge between evoked emotion and conscious knowledge; words are cables that hold up the bridge. —Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987 When Chicana author, cultural theorist, and feminist Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa died in 2004, she left behind not only a strong literary and scholarly legacy but…
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Establishing History: The Black Diaspora Archive and the Texas Domestic Slave Trade Project
BY RACHEL E. WINSTON The vision for the Black Diaspora Archive at The University of Texas at Austin came into focus in 2013 as a collaborative project between Black Studies, LLILAS Benson, and the University of Texas Libraries. After years of continued successful collaboration, Black Studies approached LLILAS Benson with the idea of creating an…
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Brazilian Roças: A Legacy in Peril
BY EDWARD SHORE Vanessa de França is a farmer and activist from São Pedro, one of 88 quilombos, rural black communities descended from fugitive slaves, that call the Atlantic forest of São Paulo state and neighboring Paraná their home. Two hundred years ago, de França’s ancestors escaped the gold mines and rice plantations that dotted…
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Cardenal in Hard Times
BY LUIS E. CÁRCAMO-HUECHANTE Leer en español It was the winter of 1979. I was already in my fourth year of high school in Valdivia, in southern Chile, when my literature teacher surprised my class by bringing in a record player. As she turned it on, a singular voice came out, with an accent that…
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Mexico in Times of Violence and Impunity: Legal and Forensic Anthropology in Support of Human Rights
BY AÍDA HERNÁNDEZ CASTILLO Leer en español Mexico is engulfed in a human rights crisis. The current atmosphere of violence and impunity implies new challenges for social anthropology and, more specifically, legal anthropology. Long-term fieldwork in regions affected by violence involves multiple risks for researchers and students. This forces us to seek collective research strategies…
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Poverty Tourism: From 18th-Century London to 21st-Century Rio de Janeiro
BY BIANCA FREIRE-MEDEIROS July 31, 2015. O Dia, one of Brazil’s major newspapers, announces that residents from three favelas in Rio de Janeiro are offering a package of “tourism experiences” for visitors interested in an authentic “cultural exchange”: the Favelando entre as Favelas tour. The experience includes not only a guided tour by a local…
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Reading the First Books: Colonial Mexican Documents in the Digital Age
BY HANNAH ALPERT-ABRAMS AND MARIA VICTORIA FERNANDEZ In 1595, in Mexico City, the Jesuit priest Antonio del Rincón (1555–1601) published a grammatical description of the Nahuatl language. Though other grammars of Nahuatl existed, Rincón’s Arte mexicana was the first to describe the indigenous Mesoamerican language from the perspective of a native speaker, and the first…
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“Wake Up”