CLAS Past Events > Winter Quarter 2009

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Tuesday, January 6

Dr. Alexander Galetovic, Tinker Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies; Associate Professor of Economics, Universidad de los Andes, Chile

Pinochet and Economics: Market Reforms in Chile, 1973-2008
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito from 11:45 am

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Alexander Galetovic holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and an undergraduate degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Since 2005, he has served both as an Associate Professor of Economics at the Universidad de los Andes and as a researcher for the Centro de Estudios Públicos. As Chile’s leading economist in the fields of industrial organization and regulation, Galetovic is the author of numerous articles in Chilean and international journals. His research focuses on regulatory policies and performance in the electricity, telecommunications, and transportation sectors. Professor Galetovic is a regular contributor to the Stanford Center for International Development's annual conferences on Latin American economic development.

Tuesday, January 13

Dr. Matthew Looper, Professor of Art History, California State University - Chico

Evidence for Ancient Maya Dance
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito from 11:45 am

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

How can we reconstruct dance rituals performed by the Maya more than a thousand years ago? Although the precise patterns of movement are elusive, there is considerable evidence of the costumes, venues, and politico-religious motivations for performances, as well as the identities of the dancers themselves. Using hieroglyphic texts, pictorial images in a variety of media, architecture, and correlations with modern dance, we can come close to capturing the essential meanings of dance among the ancient Maya.

Matthew Looper received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin in 1995. His advisor was Dr. Linda Schele. His dissertation research was conducted between 1993 and 1995 in Quiriguá, Izabal, Guatemala, on the sculpture programs of K'ahk Tiliw, an eighth-century Maya ruler of Quiriguá. Following postdoctoral work on the Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project, Department of Native American Studies, University of California at Davis (1996-1998), he joined the faculty at California State University, Chico, where he has taught from 1998-present. Looper's research interests include Classic Maya art and writing, Maya textiles, and Maya dance traditions, in all periods. His books include: To Be Like Gods: Dance in Ancient Maya Civilization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009); Quiriguá: A Guide to an Ancient Maya City (Guatemala City: Editorial Antigua, 2007); Birds and Thorns: Textile Design in San Martín Sacatepéquez (Guatemala City: Editorial Antigua, 2004); Lightning Warrior: Maya Art and Kingship at Quiriguá (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs, Volume One: The Classic Period Inscriptions (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003) (with Martha J. Macri); and Gifts of the Moon: Huipil Designs of the Ancient Maya. San Diego Museum Papers 38. (San Diego: San Diego Museum of Man, 2000).

Friday, January 16

Career Day at the Center for Latin American Studies
2:15 - 6:30 pm

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Are you interested in pursuing a career related to Latin America?
Wondering how to go about it?
Want to know what options you have?

Then come to Career Day at the Center for Latin American Studies.
Explore interests and opportunities; learn from and network with alumni of Stanford Latin American Studies programs.

2:15pm - Workshop with Sam Rodriguez from campus Career Development Center
3:30pm - Q&A panel with alumni of Stanford LAS programs
5:00pm - Reception: refreshments, mingling & networking

**This event is free and open to all Stanford undergraduate and graduate students.
Please tell your friends and classmates!**

Tuesday, January 20

Dr. Ernesto Schargrodsky, Tinker Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies; Dean of the Business School, Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina

Property Rights for the Poor:
Short and Long Run Effects of Land Titling on Poverty Alleviation
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito/refreshments from 11:45 am

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

We exploit a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to evaluate the causal effects of property rights. We find that entitled families increased housing investment, reduced household size, and enhanced the education of their children relative to a control group, thus improving their physical and human capital accumulation. These effects, however, do not take place through improvements in access to credit.

Ernesto Schargrodsky received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1998. He is currently the Dean of the Business School of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has been a visiting scholar at both Stanford University and Harvard University. His research includes studies of the effect of the use of electronic systems for the payment of welfare programs, the impact of privatization of water companies on child mortality, the distribution of crime victimization across socioeconomic levels, and the effects of awarding land titles to squatters. At Stanford, he is researching crime measurements to inform public decision-making. Dr. Schargrodsky's work has been published in a number of prominent journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Journal of Development Economics. He received the Bernardo Houssay Award for Young Researcher in the Social Sciences from the Ministry of Education of Argentina, and he has been awarded numerous fellowships, grants, and prizes by academic and non-academic institutions, including Harvard University, Stanford University, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United Nations.

Wednesday, January 21

Stanford in Madrid and Santiago Info Session
12:00-1:00 pm

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

The deadline to apply for Overseas Studies Programs is coming up soon!
Do you want to go to Madrid or Santiago this fall?

Come learn about these fantastic study abroad opportunities.
Past participants and faculty-in-residence, Dr. Herb Klein, will share their experiences and take your questions.

**Pizza & drinks provided**

Co-sponsored by Bing Overseas Studies Programs

Friday, January 23

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia

From Tupak Katari to Evo Morales: Política Indígena in the Andes (in English)
12:00-1:00 pm

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui is a sociologist, historian, and activist from Bolivia. She advises President Evo Morales' government on coca issues. Professor Rivera Cusicanqui has taught throughout the Americas, and she is the previous director and longtime member of the Taller de Historia Oral Andina. Her best known work is Oppressed But Not Defeated: Peasant Struggles Among the Aymara and Quechua in Bolivia, 1900-1980.

**Pizza & beverages provided**

Friday, January 23

Monica Miller Walsh Summer Internship Symposium
4:00-6:00 pm

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Presentations by the 2008 recipients of the Monica Miller Walsh Summer Internship Grants. Come find out about their recent experiences in Mexico, El Salvador, and Bolivia, and learn how you can get money to complete a custom-designed summer internship in Latin America.

**Light refreshments provided**

Tuesday, January 27

Dr. Hebe Mattos, Professor of History, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil; Nabuco Visiting Scholar

Slavery and Coffee in Rio de Janeiro:
The Contemporary Map of Jongo and the Presence of the Past
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito from 11:45 am

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

The talk aims to present the main results of the research project "Memory of Slavery and Immaterial Patrimony in Rural Communities of Southeast Brazil" co-coordinated with Martha Abreu in the Oral History and Image Lab of Federal Fluminense University (LABHOI-UFF). The project resulted in the production of 260 hours of audiovisual sources—genealogical interviews, life narratives, and performances—which are open to the public at the UFF Library Audio Visual Collection (www.historia.uff.br/jongos) and in a historical movie, Jongos, Calangos and Folias: Black Music, memory and poetry (2007), directed by Hebe Mattos and Martha Abreu. The talk will comment on the film's historical narrative, presenting the social history of old poetic practices of Rio de Janeiro rural black communities like Jongos (a performance of song, drums and dance, now formally recognized by the government as part of Brazil's cultural patrimony), Calangos (accordion and percussion balls with challenge songs) and group performances during Kings' day. The presentation will highlight the social background of the performers, descendants of the last generation of African slaves who lived in rural coffee plantations of the state of Rio de Janeiro, and their contemporary struggles for land and for building a new identity as "remanescentes de quilombo" - to whom an article of the Brazilian 1988 Constitution recognizes collective rights to land. During the talk parts of the film will be projected.

Hebe Mattos is Full Professor of History at University Federal Fluminense in Brazil. She is the author or co-author of numerous books on Brazilian slavery, memory of slavery, and racial relations in Brazil, including Das Cores do Silêncio, Significados da Liberdade no Sudeste Escravista, Brasil, séc. XIX (Nova Fronteira, 1998), for which she received the Brazil National Archive Research Award (1995), and The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Abolition in Brazil (with Rebecca Scott, Seymor Dresher, George Reid Andrews and Robert Levine, Duke University Press, 1988). Her most recent book is Memórias do Cativeiro: Família, Trabalho e Cidadania no pós-abolição with Ana Lugão Rios (Civilização Brasileira, 2005). She is also (with Martha Abreu) the general director of the research historical movies Memórias do Cativeiro (2005) and Jongos, Calangos and Folias: Música Negra, memória e poesia (2007), produced by the LABHOI-Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem (Oral History and Image Lab) of Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). Presently she is developing research on slavery, manumission, and the historical process of building racial categories in Brazil.

Wednesday, January 28

The Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies presents

Dr. William H. Dow, Henry J. Kaiser Associate Professor of Health Economics, University of California-Berkeley

Exploring Determinants of Costa Rica’s Exceptional Longevity
4:15-5:30 pm

Herrin Hall T-175 (Biological Sciences building)

William H. Dow is the Henry J. Kaiser Associate Professor of Health Economics at the University of California-Berkeley, where he is chair of the Health Services and Policy Analysis graduate group and Associate Director of the Berkeley Population Center. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and previously served as Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Dow’s research analyzes economic aspects of health insurance, health behaviors, and health and demographic outcomes. Dow’s honors include the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators awarded by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration, and the Kenneth J. Arrow Award given by the International Health Economics Association. He earned his PhD from Yale and has been a visiting scholar at both Cambridge University in England and the University of Minnesota.

The Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies Winter Colloquium is a lecture series for students, the Stanford community, and the general public that presents the latest scientific findings in demography, epidemiology, genetics, and other areas in the field of population and resource studies.

Tuesday, February 3

Reese Erlich, Freelance Reporter and Author

The Future of Cuba Policy Under the Obama Administration
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito / refreshments from 11:45 am

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Reese Erlich's history in journalism goes back 41 years. He first worked as a staff writer and research editor for Ramparts, a national, investigative reporting magazine published in San Francisco from 1963 to 1975. Today he works as a full-time print and broadcast, freelance reporter. He reports regularly for CBC, ABC (Australia), Radio Deutsche Welle and National Public Radio. His articles appear in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News. His television documentaries have aired on PBS stations nationwide.

Erlich’s book, Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You, co-authored with Norman Solomon, became a best seller in 2003. His book, The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, was published in October 2007 with a foreword by Robert Scheer. (Polipoint Press). His latest book, Dateline Havana: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Future of Cuba (Polipoint) was released January 6, 2009 with a foreword by former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer.

San Francisco Chronicle book reviewer Ruth Rosen said, "Some people are treated as pariahs when they tell the truth; later, history lauds them for their courage and convictions. Reese Erlich is one of those truth tellers."

His magazine articles have appeared in San Francisco Magazine, California Monthly, California Lawyer, Mother Jones, The Progressive, The Nation, and AARP’s Segunda Juventud, and he has worked as a consultant to National Geographic.

Erlich shared the prestigious 2006 Peabody award as a segment producer for the public radio series "Crossing East," a history of Asians in the U.S. In 2004 Erlich’s radio special "Children of War: Fighting, Dying, Surviving," won a Clarion Award presented by the Association for Women in Communication and second and third place from the National Headliner Awards. His article about the U.S. use of depleted uranium ammunition was voted the eighth most censored story in America for 2002-3 by Project Censored at Sonoma State University. In 2002 his radio documentary, "The Russia Project," hosted by Walter Cronkite, won the depth reporting prize for broadcast journalism awarded by the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Tuesday, February 10

Dr. Jorge Ruffinelli, Professor of Latin American Literature and Film, Stanford University

¿Existe un canon del cine latinoamericano?
**EN ESPAÑOL**
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito / refreshments from 11:45 am

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Jorge Ruffinelli (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1943), a critic, a film historian and currently a Professor at Stanford University, started teaching at the University of Buenos Aires in 1973. In 1974 he traveled to Mexico, where he was Director of the Centro de Investigaciones Lingüístico-Literararias at the Universidad Veracruzana for twelve years, taught literature and collaborated in major cultural journals and newspapers of the Latin American continent. In 1986 he was appointed Full Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford. In Mexico he founded and directed the literary journal "Texto Crítico" and in the USA he has directed the journal "Nuevo Texto Crítico" since 1987. He has published fifteen books of literary and cultural criticism and more than five hundred articles in journals throughout the world. A recognized authority on Onetti, García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, and Latin American literary history, during the nineties his critical work has centered on Latin American cinema. In 2001 his book on Patricio Guzmán was published in Madrid by Cátedra / Filmoteca Española. A revised and updated version of this book has been published in Chile in 2008: El Cine de Patricio Guzmán: En busca de las imágenes verdaderas. Some of his most recent books are: La sonrisa de Gardel (Montevideo: Trilce, 2004) on the late tango singer; Victor Gaviria: Los márgenes al centro (Madrid: Turner / Casa de America, 2004), and Sueños de realidad. Fernando Pérez: Tres décadas de cine (Alcalá: Universidad de Alcalá, 2005). In 1993 he filmed a documentary on Augusto Monterroso for which he interviewed major Mexican writers and critics. He is finishing the first Encyclopedia of Latin American Cinema, for which he has written around two thousand articles on feature films from and about Latin America.

Tuesday, February 17

Dr. Herb Klein, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, Stanford University

Emigration and Immigration in the Making of Modern Spain
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito / refreshments from 11:45 am

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Today the 5 million foreign born make up 11% of the population of Spain, with a half a million arriving just in 2008. But until 1980 Spain was a classic country of emigration – some 5 million Spaniards emigrated from Spain in the period 1880-1930 and another 3 million went to northern Europe as guest workers from 1950-1980. The cause for this sudden and profound change after 1980; the origin of these immigrants; and their social, economic and legal integration in contemporary Spain will be the main themes of this talk.

Herbert S. Klein, Professor of History, specializes in Latin American history. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1957 and his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1963. For thirty five years he taught at Columbia University and was the Gouverneur Morris Professor of History. He is the author of some 20 books and 155 articles in several languages on Latin America and on comparative themes in social and economic history. Among these books are four comparative studies of slavery, the most recent of which are African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (co-author) (2007), The Atlantic Slave Trade (1999), and Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750-1850 (co-author) (2003), as well as four books on Bolivian history, the latest of which is Haciendas and Ayllus: Rural Society in the Bolivian Andes in the 18th and 19th Centuries (1993) and A Concise History of Bolivia (2003). He has also published on such diverse themes as The American Finances of the Spanish Empire, 1680-1809 (1998) and A Population History of the United States (2004). He is also the co-author of two studies on recent Latin American developments, Brazil Since 1980 (2006) and Mexico Since 1980 (2008). He is currently the editor of the Cambridge University series of Latin American Studies. His long-term interests are in comparative economic and social history. Aside from courses on Latin America, he teaches methodology classes on quantitative methods in historical research and demographic history. He has taught full terms at the Universities of Toronto, Buenos Aires, and the Latin American universities of Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia, La República in Uruguay (two terms in different years), San Andrés and the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (both in Argentina), and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, U.Federal de Paraná, Universidade de São Paulo (several terms); PUC- São Paulo, and the Colegio de México.; as well as the Hebrew University; and L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) (two terms in different years); He has been a Guggenheim fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Fulbright Lecturer several times and was a post-doctoral fellow at Yale and Oxford. He is currently Professor of History, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Tuesday, February 24

Dr. William Summerhill, Professor of History, University of California-Los Angeles

From Credibility to Crisis: The History of Sovereign Borrowing in Brazil
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito / refreshments from 11:45 am

Defaults on public debt in Latin America have been associated with economic downturns and political upheaval for nearly two centuries. Brazil, however, established a remarkable record of debt payment in the first century after independence Unlike Spanish American nations, Brazil continued to pay its creditors for more than fifty years, despite financial and political crises. How did Brazil repay its debts for so long? Why did it squander its reputation for faithful repayment at the end of the nineteenth century? What mechanisms helped support credible
sovereign borrowing? The talk explores these questions in the context of the larger problem of sustainable sovereign borrowing by developing countries.

William Summerhill is Professor of History at UCLA, where he has taught since 1994. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Florida, followed by a Ph.D from Stanford in 1995. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil on several occasions, most recently at the University of São Paulo. His book, Inglorious Revolution: Political Institutions, Sovereign Debt, and Financial Underdevelopment in Imperial Brazil, is forthcoming from Yale University Press. He is presently writing a book on the origins of economic backwardness in nineteenth-century Brazil.

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Tuesday, March 3

Geri Smith, Chief Latin America correspondent and Mexico bureau chief for BusinessWeek; current Knight Fellow

Treading Water: How Complacency, Cronyism and Crime are stalling Mexico’s Progress
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito / refreshments from 11:45 am

Twenty-five years after Mexico started opening its economy to the outside world, the country seems to be stalled. Although the North American Free Trade Agreement helped the country quadruple its exports and attract billions in foreign investment, Mexico has not posted the strong economic growth and job creation that had been expected. Efforts to reign in monopolies and improve education have fallen short. Even the national oil company is in disarray, with oil production plummeting. Now, the U.S. economic slowdown is impacting Mexican exports and remittances sent home by migrants, and unprecedented, drug-related violence that killed 6,000 last year threatens to scare off foreign investment. What does Mexico need to do to emerge from this slump?

Geri Smith, Latin America correspondent and Mexico bureau chief for BusinessWeek, is a Knight Journalism Fellow this year at Stanford. She has covered Mexico since 1992 and has reported from Latin America for 30 years. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Tuesday, March 10

Dr. José Luis Villacañas Berlanga, Professor of Moral History, Universidad de Murcia, Spain; Tinker Visiting Professor, Stanford

Populismo y postcolonialismo latinoamericano:
un ensayo de valoración desde la teoría política
12:15 - 1:05 pm
cafecito / refreshments from 11:45 am

**EN ESPAÑOL**

Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row

La aprobación del Referéndum constitucional y el descubrimiento de los más importantes yacimientos mundiales de litio, ha vuelto a poner a Bolivia en el centro de la atención mundial. Mas a pesar de la victoria pírrica en el Referéndum, tanto las aspiraciones de Santa Cruz y otras regiones, como las exigencias del movimiento indigenista radical, amenazan con hacer regresar la situación política al estadio de enfrentamiento civil de meses atrás. Al margen de los acontecimientos, esta charla se preguntará por los fundamentos teóricos, culturales y políticos del nuevo constitucionalismo boliviano que presionan hasta la raíz misma de esta situación conflictiva. Y lo hará comparando este discurso postcolonial de los teóricos que soportan la estrategia radical boliviana con los teóricos postcoloniales clásicos, como los de la India.

José Luis Villacañas Berlanga holds a Ph.D. from the Universitat de Valencia, where he was an Associate Professor of Philosophy from 1982-1986. Since 2003, he has been a Professor of Moral History at the Universidad de Murcia, where he was a Professor of History of Philosophy from 1997-2002. He was also a Research Professor at the Instituto de Filosofía, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid.