Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity in Cold War Latin America

Acknowledgments

i x In the process of editing a volume with such a wide scope, I’ve incurred numerous debts, only a small fraction of which I am able to recognize here. My intellectual debts began in 2007, when Tufts University hosted a symposium on indigenous movements and intellectuals in the Americas at which José Antonio Lucero presented a paper titled “The ‘African’ Origins of Indianismo?” The paper made a strong concluding statement that begged further consideration: that national liberation and decolonization across the Americas depended on producing transnational solidarity and consciousness, and that this challenge was in fact more important than creating actual political communities that transcended national boundaries. Having come across this piece, I was struck by the inherent issue raised by such a statement: how solidarity participated in the work of resisting forms of colonialism in various local contexts. I am grateful to José Antonio for his intellectual generosity in sharing his thoughts and writings with me and for sparking the interest that eventually led to this present work. This project, compelled by Lucero’s statement, began to take shape in earnest in a panel that I organized for the Vancouver meeting of the Canadian Latin American and Caribbean Studies Association in 2008. Participants included political scientist Thomas Olesen, historian Christine Hatzky, geographer Catherine Nolin, and sociologist Patricia Tomic. The conversation that followed the panel opened the issue even farther than I had initially intended, which convinced me even further that a more detailed historical study was in order. I am indebted to Eric Zolov, Greg Grandin, Victoria Langland, Heidi Tinsman, and Gilbert Joseph for making valuable suggestions of inclusions and thought matter in the volume’s early conceptual stages. I am equally grateful to Steve Stern, Jeffrey Gould, Pablo Yankelevich, Luis Roniger, Raanan Rein, Florencia Mallon, Paul Gootenberg, Arun Agrawal, Horacio Tarcus, Eric Acknowledgments x A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s Hershberg, Nichole Stahlmann, and Jorge Nállim for communicating their valuable thoughts, commentary, and suggestions as the volume developed. Comments from audience members at the American Historical Association and Latin American Studies Association meetings that hosted papers by various contributing authors are also gratefully acknowledged. The University of British Columbia’s commendable generosity toward junior faculty allowed me to take advantage of a reduced teaching load during the completion of this project and facilitated the hiring of two outstanding research assistants, Sasha Johnston and Stephanie Tissot, who each contributed to the delivery of the final work. I am especially grateful to Cynthia Mathieson, Peter Wylie, and Peter Urmetzer for their unflagging support of this project, and to my colleagues in the history and Latin American studies departments, of which James Hull, Francisco Peña, James Rochlin, and Margo Tamez each provided valuable advice and timely suggestions. I am also grateful to my students , in particular Ashley Black and Bethany Wade, for raising challenging questions in my seminar courses, which forced me to think about the work in different ways. In the final stages of editing and polishing up the final draft of the manuscript , I would like to acknowledge the wonderful care and shepherding of the project by Gwen Walker, Sheila McMahon, and the series editors at the University of Wisconsin Press. I am also thankful for the assistance of Carla Miranda and Barbara Camps at the Museo de Solidaridad Salvador Allende, who graciously facilitated permission to reproduce the image on the cover of the book. From the early moments of this project, Christine Hatzky provided an intellectual companionship and enthusiasm that made the project feel more like an adventure than work. And finally, Brenda Elsey was an incomparable sounding board and provided sustaining intellectual support and camaraderie throughout the entire process. I am especially appreciative of her many interventions and her remarkable sense of humor. During the course of this project, however, an important compañera in the field passed away. Patricia Pessar was a model of the kind of intellectual solidarity that inspires young scholars to embark on the study of Latin American resistance. This book is dedicated to her memory. Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity in Cold War Latin America ...