2025 Edition
The 2024–2025 academic year stands out at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection for meaningful milestones, distinguished visitors, and exciting acquisition news.
The year 2025 marks a quarter-century since Joe Long and the late Dr. Teresa Lozano Long announced a $10 million gift to the Institute of Latin American Studies at UT Austin, ushering in a name change from ILAS to LLILAS and a new era of possibility.
The 25th anniversary of the Longs’ gift coincides with the 85th birthday of the institute as well as the 45th anniversary of the LLILAS Mexico Center. LLILAS celebrated this convergence of anniversaries with several signature events.
In October, the Honorable Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile, delivered the Mary Ann Faulkner Lecture in Latin American Public Affairs and Policy, an event featured in this issue. The following March, the Austin Lecture on Contemporary Mexico brought celebrated Mexican actor, director, and producer Gael García Bernal to campus for a public conversation with LLILAS Director Adela Pineda Franco, co-sponsored by the Mexico Center. Pineda Franco revisits their wide-ranging discussion in these pages.
In April, the Benson hosted Pulitzer Prize–winning author and 2020 MacArthur Fellow Cristina Rivera Garza, whose papers we are thrilled to now include in our growing archive of outstanding Latin American women writers.
Other exciting acquisitions announced this past year include the literary archives of the late Colombian author Andrés Caicedo, and of Argentine author, educator, and former political prisoner Alicia Kozameh, who presented a public talk on her archive and her work this past spring.
LLILAS continues its exemplary educational work both on campus and off. This spring we celebrated the achievements of a stellar cohort of graduates. At the same time, Pido la Palabra, our Mellon Foundation grant, has allowed us to teach bilingual creative writing classes to incarcerated students since 2023. Led by Adela Pineda Franco, the grant has produced two publications of student writing, a website/blog, and a podcast project.
Each semester, scholars from outside Texas make exciting contributions to our community during their visits. This issue features conversations with LLILAS Tinker Visiting Professors Daniel Escotto of Mexico and Marixa Lasso of Panama, both of whom taught graduate seminars. Through the LLILAS Indigenous Languages Initiative, we offered two levels of K’iche’ Maya, taught by the gifted and dedicated educator Manuela Tahay Tzaj during fall and spring. She will return in fall 2025. Chilean visiting musical artist Juan Pablo Abalo taught an enthusiastically received undergraduate course in the spring, and will return to teach in fall 2025.
Highlights of LLILAS Benson Public Engagement activities include visits by Mexican artist and educator Fernando Aceves Humana and Colombian coffee expert Elizabeth Cruz Valencia.
The interdisciplinary 2025 Lozano Long Conference, “Urban Entanglements: Centering Marginalized Lives and Ecologies in Latin America,” was organized by LLILAS affiliates Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez (Department of History) and Juana Salcedo (School of Architecture). It brought together an outstanding roster of speakers whose contributions elevated the level of debate and cross-pollination of ideas among thinkers and disciplines. We are pleased to publish pieces by two of them: art historian Barbara E. Mundy of Tulane University and environmental historian C.J. Alvarez of UT Austin.
As always, Portal features outstanding research by UT Austin students. In this issue, you will find an article related to the Urban Entanglements theme by PhD student in History Chloe Foor and a timely account of Chinese infrastructure projects in Latin America by LLILAS PhD student Huiying Cui.
Rounding out the issue are highlights from a traveling exhibition on the Mexican Revolution created by the LLILAS Benson Digital Scholarship Office, as well as a faculty spotlight interview with journalism professor and historian Celeste González de Bustamante, chair of the Mexico Center. Don’t forget to visit the last page of the magazine for snapshots of other initiatives.
Saludos cordiales,
Adela Pineda Franco, Director, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
Melissa Guy, Director, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection