WELCOME to the twenty-first edition of Portal magazine. This issue brings together research, scholarship, and images that reflect an exceptional academic year.
Last May, LLILAS celebrated the graduation of a stellar group of students, with family, friends, faculty, and staff cheering the accomplishments of our latest cohort of bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD recipients. The heartfelt ceremony closed with original poetry recited by two graduates and a rousing Brazilian samba sung by another.
The close of the academic year was complemented by continuing celebrations of our own milestones. LLILAS culminated its yearlong celebration—85 years of the institute and the 25 years since Joe and Teresa Lozano Long’s gift—with the publication of a historical retrospective of Latin American Studies at UT Austin.
This issue celebrates yet another milestone: the 25th anniversary of the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), a LLILAS Benson initiative of enormous significance.
Anniversaries were also central at the Benson Latin American Collection, where curator Veronica Valarino collaborated with undergraduate history students to create the exhibition Revolutions and Constitutions: Nation-Building in the Americas after 1776, featured in these pages.
Historians also have the word in an interview feature: Professors Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (UT Austin) and Adrian Masters (Trier University) discuss their recently published volume The Radical Spanish Empire, which examines how commoners and elites challenged the social hierarchy in the Spanish New World.
Each year, LLILAS welcomes visiting faculty to teach for a semester through the Tinker Visiting Professorship. We were thrilled to host Guatemalan archaeologist and LLILAS alumnus Edwin Román Ramírez in the fall and Mexican psycholinguist Haydée Carrasco-Ortiz in the spring. Each of them contributes an article to this issue.
Another distinguished contributor is James Iffland, emeritus professor at Boston University and renowned expert on the Salvadoran poet and political activist Roque Dalton, whose archive was recently acquired by the Benson Collection. We cannot think of a more perfect way to celebrate this acquisition than to publish Iffland’s thought-provoking article.
As always, the past academic year was filled with a diverse roster of events. Two signature events are represented in these pages: LLILAS Director Adela Pineda Franco reviews ideas about culture and artificial intelligence discussed by Mexican author and intellectual Juan Villoro at the Austin Lecture on Contemporary Mexico, and Professor of Government Raúl L. Madrid looks back on the contributions of participants in the fall 2025 Lozano Long Conference, “The Evolution of Violence in Latin America.”
Professors Iván Chaar López (American Studies) and Edgar Gómez-Cruz (School of Information) also take up the timely and urgent topic of AI in their important and thoughtful contribution.
Faculty members Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez, Department of History, and Astrid Runggaldier, Art and Art History, explore the material world and the power of objects in the context of a collection of pre-Columbian art given to the institute by Joe and Teresa Lozano Long in 2019.
LLILAS and the Benson are home to exceptional staff members. In this issue, we are pleased to include profiles of linguist Susan Smythe Kung, coordinator of the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, and historian Caroline Garriott, LLILAS Public Engagement Coordinator, each of whom brings passion, intellectual depth, and a spirit of innovation to their work.
Portal is always proud to feature student research. We open with an article on Ecuador’s Chocó Andino by recent graduate Salomé Valdivieso, MA. We close with a piece by alumnus Adrián Fernández, LLILAS class of 2025, whose contribution ties in historical research at the Benson Collection, family history, and a writing assignment for a class taught by Adela Pineda.
At first glance, this issue appears to contain many distinct thematic threads, but the closer one looks, the more these threads come together in a meaningful tapestry. Reader, we hope you enjoy it!
Saludos cordiales,
Adela Pineda Franco, Director, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
Melissa Guy, Director, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection