Accidental Historian: An Interview with Arnold J. Bauer
- Accidental Historian:An Interview with Arnold J. Bauer
Appreciated among Latin Americanists in the United States and highly regarded in Chile, Arnold ("Arnie") Bauer taught history at the University of California at Davis from 1970 to 2005, and was director of the University of California's Education Abroad Program in Santiago, Chile, for five years between 1994 and 2005. Well-known for his engaging writing style, Bauer reflects broad interests in his publications: agrarian history (Chilean Rural Society: From the Spanish Conquest to 1930 [1975]), the Catholic Church and society (as editor, La iglesia en la economía de América Latina, siglos XIX-XIX [1986]), and material culture (Goods, Power, History: Latin America's Material Culture [2001]). He has also written an academic mystery regarding a sixteenth-century Mexican codex, The Search for the Codex Cardona (2009). His coming-of-age memoir (Time's Shadow: Remembering a Family Farm in Kansas [2012]) describes his childhood and was recently named one of the top five books of 2012 by The Atlantic. He has also written some 50 articles and book chapters and more than 60 book reviews.
Among Bauer's publications in Spanish is Chile y algo más. Estudios de historia latinoamericana (2004), a collection of essays that Heidi Tinsman has called the chronicle of "a love story" between Bauer and Chile.1 In 2005, he was awarded the Order of Merit Gabriela Mistral (Orden al Mérito Docente y Cultural Gabriela Mistral), Chile's highest honor for foreigners, for his contributions to education and culture. His house and small winery in Davis, California, which he built with his own hands, has hosted decades of lively meals and guests as distinguished as Eric Hobsbawm and Fidel Castro's brother-in-law. [End Page 493] Yet, he has always considered himself an "accidental academic." This interview follows the twists and turns of Bauer's unusual career.
Let's start with the rather uncommon path you took to becoming a Latin Americanist. It's quite different from most, I believe.
Yes, I'd think so. I was born on a 160-acre farm northeast of the town of Clay Center, Kansas, 15 miles of unpaved roads from the nearest doctor, with my Aunt Helen serving as midwife. My great-grandparents homesteaded that land after the Civil War and it remained in my family until we were swept away in the 1960s by what I learned to call in Berkeley, the onset of "agrarian capitalism." And I walked the mile and a half to the iconic one-room rural school—a total of 15 kids in all eight grades. The founding of that school accompanied the Homestead Acts [1862].
Then I imagine you went to high school. That must have taken you off the farm.
Not really. I rode with the blacksmith's son in his Model A Ford to the high school in Clay Center and returned in time to do the ordinary farm chores. Clay County Community High School had 300 students, devoted teachers, and a wide range of courses, including music, theater, and Latin. I excelled in making small, concrete hog-troughs, case-hardened chisels, and oak and cedar furniture for our house. I made it from logs sawed in the small sawmill my father had designed and built to survive the Depression and drought in the 1930s. I remember getting a B in Geometry, a C in Mrs. Reynolds's U.S. history class, and good marks in shop.
I know you served in the U.S. Air Force. How did that happen?
I spent the summer following high school graduation back on the farm, but then with encouragement from the parents of one of my high school buddies, I managed to get into Kansas State University. I spent two desultory semesters there, coming home to work on weekends. Then the Korean War began and I enlisted in the Air Force for a four-year assignment.
Very few of our colleagues at UC Davis served in the military.
Well, it's true that I thought the Communists had to be stopped—I was a primitive...
