Description:

Northwestern graduate students, Jack Martinez Arias and Theodore Foster, will present their research findings for the LACS Research Workshop. 

Jack Martinez Arias, Spanish & Portuguese - "Broken Bridges: Fiction on Andean Modernization"

Description: After the devastating War of the Pacific (1879-1884), Peruvian liberal writers were anxious to imagine a rebuilt and developed national economy. The hypothetical economic revival would occur on the basis of the exploitation and export of natural resources, with emphasis on minerals such as silver and gold. This talk will analyze how, in the main Peruvian foundational novel and in the most important Peruvian magazine of the late 19th century, the unpredictable Andean environment and indigenous people seem to appear as agents interrupting the desired process of economic modernization. The talk will focus on the different aspects of representations of broken bridges and train derailments that appear as constant threats to the efficient transportation of mineral resources and for the safe commuting of people involved with mining investments in the central Andes. 

Theodore Foster, African American Studies - "Archiving Blackness in the North Andes: Juan Garcia and Black Studies in Ecuador"

Description: This workshop will introduce preliminary research and analysis situating how and why archives of blackness and black people were constituted in Ecuador beginning in the late 1970s with the archival practices of oral historian, writer and activist, Juan García. García donated a trove of his personal archive to a public university in 2006 that was the central site of research this summer. Garcia’s archive at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito as well as the Afro Andean Studies program (Estudios Afro-Andinos) represent the fruit of a larger movement for black Ecuadorian recognition, visibility and racial justice. In addition, this talk considers how blackness is archived and signified by the 2015 commemoration and construction of a Plaza dedicated to Haiti in Quito and the 195th celebration of independence for the majority black province of Esmeraldas on August 5th.