December 2020 Newsletter

There is hope on the horizon in December, 2020. The clear and resounding Biden-Harris victory signals a turning point in this difficult year. Despite the recent spike in virus cases and more closures, vaccines have been developed and will be deployed within months. We look forward to returning to campus in the spring or summer of 2021. Meantime, we continue to work, to teach and to learn, as best as we can.

Amid all the activity in November, we lost two esteemed colleagues and friends. Professor Juan Gómez-Quiñones, a leader and activist in the Chicano movement, UCLA historian, passed on November 11. Juan received his Ph.D from UCLA and taught in our History department for 50 years. Fifty years! He wrote numerous books on Chicano politics, U.S.-Mexican relations, immigration and labor, cultural history. He taught and trained I don't know how many thousands of students during his long and distinguished career. His contributions to our university's mission, to the Chicanx movement, to Humanity, are inestimable. And on November 1, All Saints Day, Día de los Muertos, my dear friend Father Stafford Poole slipped away from this world. A Roman Catholic priest based at St. Vincent's parish on Adams and Figueroa, Stafford was also a prolific historian who wrote several books on the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Church in Mexico, among other topics; he translated into English the Latin writings of the "Defender of the Indians" Bartolomé de las Casas, and in his later years went on to learn classical Nahuatl and to translate colonial Nahuatl-language texts. Both Juan and Stafford lived and worked in Los Angeles, enriching our great city with their intellect, energy, compassion, and dedication to the study of Mexico and people of Mexican descent. I am honored to have known them. They and their many good works and deeds will never be forgotten.

The LAI is focusing on a few remaining programs in these last three weeks of the fall quarter, including a fascinating webinar on the Black Lives Matter Movement in Brazil, planned with the Center for Brazilian Studies, scheduled for December 10 at noon. We hope you can join us. All of our programs are free and open to the public.

I wish you well in these hard times. If possible, please consider supporting our research, teaching and outreach mission with a gift or donation this December. Thank you and please be safe.

Kevin Terraciano, LAI Director