Latin American Studies Association

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION. Few scholarly fields have been as sensitive to political events as that of Latin American studies, and few have engendered so many activist scholars. Before the 1960s, the study of Latin America in the United States was largely descriptive, and critical study was confined to journalistic approaches, particularly the work of John Reed, Carlton Beals, and Carey McWilliams. The revisionist approach to American foreign policy of William Appleman Williams was of major importance in providing a framework for the analyses of the region that were to be developed in the following decades.

Political interest in the region engendered by the Cuban Revolution gave rise to an increased demand for Latin American policy experts. This in turn stimulated interest in the field in the academic world and generated millions of dollars in foundation and government funding, which led to more dynamic scholars being attracted to it. C. Wright Mills, the leading radical academician of the period, wrote Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (1961), a favorable account of the changes taking place in Cuba and a devastating attack on US foreign policy in the hemisphere. The Cuban Revolution also inspired many young scholars to study revolutionary change in Latin America and to seek out their counterparts in Latin America in a period when the civil rights movement was bringing the rise of a radical movement within the United States.

A center for the study of the region had been developed in the 1950s at Stanford University, under the leadership of Spanish language professor Ronald Hilton. Students in the program were responsible for the publication of the monthly Hispanic American Report, which featured articles on current events in all the Latin American republics. Although the curriculum did not include theoretical components, much less leftist theoretical perspectives, the attention to the objective reality and the lack of bourgeois methodology imposed by social science disciplines, as well as the influence of Stanford’s Marxist economist Paul Baran, attracted a number of students who came with or developed a Left perspective and who made substantial contributions to the ensuing development of radical scholarship on Latin America in the United States. These included Donald Bray, Ronald Chilcote, James Cockcroft, Timothy Harding, Dale Johnson, and Saul Landau, who worked in concert with James Petras and Susanne Jonas, both of whom were trained at the University of California at Berkeley.

The theoretical paradigm adopted during this period was dependency theory. This outlook was influenced by the work being done in Latin America by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, by the writings of several Brazilian scholars including Fernando Henrique Cardoso, by the thought of traditional Communists, and by the German scholar André Gunder Frank. A key work of this period was Latin America: The Struggle with Dependency and Beyond (1974), edited by Chilcote and Joel Edelstein, with an introduction by the editors and country studies written by Latin American and North American authors using a dependency framework with emphasis on political economy.

In 1966 the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) was founded, reflecting the level of importance the field had achieved for academic professionals. At early meetings of the association, the radical wing of its membership began successfully to introduce political resolutions critical of US policy in the region. Politicization of all the social sciences increased as a result of the protests and teach-ins generated by opposition to the Vietnam War. Ultimately, resolutions came to be approved routinely at LASA business meetings with the old guard failing to mount even token objections. The panels at meetings and LASA committees began to include Marxists, radical political economists, dependency theorists, and feminists. Within LASA a coalition of leftist Latin Americanist scholars, the Union of Radical Latin Americanists, was formed during the period of professional resistance to leftist activity. This group faded as participants’ views became less opposed by the mainstream, and the Progressive Latin Americanist Network, a less explicitly radical coalition, was formed to support scholarship critical of US foreign policy.

Meanwhile, the radicalism of the 1960s was replaced by a more rigorous theoretical scholarship, both in Latin America and in the United States. This development was stimulated in the United States by the journal Latin American Perspectives, which began publishing in 1974. Edited by a collective of editors residing in southern California, with Chilcote as the managing editor and with US and foreign editors who actively participated in the reviewing and editing of articles, this journal sought to be an anti-imperialist, non-sectarian forum for authors of many political persuasions. In its pages a critical assessment of dependency theory was undertaken, and articles appeared interpreting Latin American reality from various leftist perspectives by authors from the United States, Latin America, and Europe.
Also during this period, many Latin Americanists, some influenced by Latin American intellectuals, became dissatisfied with the role of scholarly observers of social inequities and theorists of change, with praxis being limited to participation in demonstrations and teach-ins. They helped develop support groups for radical Latin American movements and made propagandistic films. Some began to participate in or organize political groups founded on Marxist-Leninist principles.

In the 1980s the concern of North American researchers focused on the crisis in Central America and US intervention there. In addition to participating in support groups, scholars formed the Guatemalan Scholars Network, the Faculty Committee on Human Rights in El Salvador, and the Central American Resource Center in Austin, Texas, to provide accurate information for public discussion. A LASA task force that observed the 1984 Nicaraguan elections attested to their fairness. A group of progressive scholars (Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America) developed policy proposals as alternatives to the hegemony over policy-making assumed by the governmental establishment.

Major changes topok place since the 1980s. An academic field that ceased to be a predominantly US-based, white-dominated organization, the LASA grew by 2020 to 13,000 members, 48 percent of whom lived in Latin America, 26 percent in the United States, and 25 percent in other countries. LASA’s changing demographics both reflected and propelled other transformations in the organization, including greater gender parity and more Latinx representation in the leadership.

One of the most visible manifestations of these changes occurred in LASA conferences in the early 2000s. The conferences, a central focus of LASA, offered members the opportunity to gather together, share scholarship, develop or advance research, and build community. However, they also tended in the past to reproduce and reinforce power structures that LASA was organizationally committed to oppose. The bi-annual conference, as traditionally held in the United States, posed two concrete hurdles for many Latin Americans. The US government issued visas to scholars based on its relationship with their governments and, as a result, frequently denied visas to Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans or any scholars it deemed dangerous, preventing them from attending the congress. Travel costs were also prohibitive for many Latin Americans, effectively limiting their participation in the organization.

LASA took several concrete steps to address these problems. Since 2004 it diversified the location of the conferences. Six conferences were held in the United States, two in Puerto Rico, which reduced expenses for members from the Caribbean area; two in Canada and one in Spain, which eliminated the visa problem but not the costs, and one each in Brazil and Peru. The 2019 conference scheduled for Mexico went virtual due to the covid pandemic. To address the financial issues, LASA established a number of travel grants for scholars from Latin America, students, non-tenured faculty, and scholars of Afro and Indigenous descent. The evolving ethnic and national backgrounds of LASA leadership responded to the growing presence of and demands made by Latin Americans and Latinxs in the organization. The 2020 LASA president was a woman from Ecuador, and the 2019 president was from Colombia. As of 2020-2021 the majority of LASA’s officers were Latina women of various national, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.

As of 2021, LASA had forty-one sections or subgroups, which reflect members’ interest and research priorities. Originally based on the countries one researched, they now reflect the intersectional and transnational interests of many LASA members. Nationally-based sections on Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, etc., and a newer one on Puerto Rico, still flourished. But so did sections on Sexuality Studies, Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples, International Migrations, and Otros Sabores, (Other Flavors) which “promotes collaborative, transformative research and exchange between academics and civil society knowledge producers to further social justice.”

Latin American Research Review (LARR), LASA’s flagship journal, published since 1965, continued, with articles in English, Portuguese, or Spanish and feature reports on new research projects and findings and book reviews. Statistics for the 2016-2017 issues reflect LASA’s changing demographics and politics. Progressive politics and a commitment to social justice remained central to LASA and its members, both within the organization and across the Americas. Because LASA is a non-partisan organization, it routinely takes positions on US government policies that affect Latin America and Latinx communities in the United States. For example, in 2009 it called on President Obama to reduce the US military presence in Latin America, normalize relations with Cuba, respect the sovereignty of Venezuela and Brazil, and not to carry out actions or implement policies that undermine democratic governments in Latin America.

LASA members voted to denounce the 2016 impeachment process against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. LASA also sent a multi-national fact-finding delegation to Brazil to investigate the impeachment process against Rousseff. The delegates issued their report in August 2017. Due to differences of opinion among the delegates, the report did not endorse the unambiguous condemnation expressed in the LASA resolution but it did evince significant concern about the process. In 2016, LASA issued a critical and unprecedented pronouncement on the US presidential elections. It stated that “the presidential campaign and election in the United States were drawn along ethnic, racial, and national boundaries to an unprecedented degree and included vicious attacks on immigrants, women, people of color and religious freedom.” LASA continued to grow, expand its global membership, adapt to evolving political realities, and promote social justice across the Americas. The theme of a timely conference encapsulated LASA’s perspective on the world and its mission “Global Crisis: Inequalities and the Centrality of Life.”

Chalhoub, Sidney and Cath Collins, Mariana Llanos, Mónica Pachón, Keisha-Khan Y. Perry. Report of The Lasa Fact-Finding Delegation on The Impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. New York: LASA, 2017.

Latin American Studies Association. Website. https://lasaweb.org/en/.

Latin American Studies Association. “News 2016,” Annual Report, 12(2015-2016).