October 2022 Newsletter

Dear Latin Americanist Community,

Welcome to the 2022-23 academic year! We start this cycle with great news: the UCLA Latin American Institute (LAI) received a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education. With this important grant to area studies centers, the LAI will be able to offer competitive language fellowships to undergraduate and graduate students learning Nahuatl, Quechua, and Portuguese. The National Resource Center component of the Title VI grant will allow us to continue supporting the programming of the LAI centers and working groups, our vibrant outreach program, and the research projects of individual faculty through travel grants, and much more. I want to express my gratitude to Bryan Pitts, assistant director of the LAI, and the wonderful staff of the Institute, Ariatne Barrera, Verónica Zavala, Marcelo Jatoba, and Orchid Mazurkiewicz (director of the Hispanic American Periodical Index), who put together a very strong proposal. Thanks also to Jennifer Osorio, currently director of special collections at the UCLA library, for her contribution highlighting the strength and needs of our Latin American collection.  

This year, the LAI is launching a year-long series on Central America, in collaboration with our Central America working group and colleagues and students in departments across campus. On October 17, Mayan leaders will visit UCLA to speak about the repression experienced by indigenous communities in Guatemala; we are also planning an event on violence against women with presenters from different Central American countries. Stay tuned for details! The outreach program of the LAI, coordinated by Verónica Zavala, has organized a year-long talk series on migrant children and their experiences moving across countries and school systems in Mexico, Central America, and the United States. This series begins promptly on October 10, with a presentation by Professor Ted Hamann (University of Nebraska) entitled “How enduring student transnationalism changes the roles of teachers.” Register for this zoom webinar here. Make sure to visit the LAI calendar to check on a full month of events on street vending in Mexico, elections in Brazil, Latin American literature, and more!

This summer, we created two new funds to support the work we do at the LAI.  If you are interested in supporting our outreach program, which organizes workshops for K-12 teachers in Los Angeles and California, visit the webpage of the LAI California Community Engagement Fund to donate. If you are interested in supporting research opportunities for the next generation of Latin Americanists, through competitive summer travel grants, visit the webpage of the Graduate Training and Research on Latin America Fund to donate. Finally, if you’d like to support the mission of the UCLA Latin American Institute and its centers, programs, and working groups, you can donate to our general fund. Your generous contributions support the lively intellectual life of the institute. Thanks!

Rubén Hernández-León,
Director of the UCLA Latin American Institute