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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Latin Americanists must be prepared for sudden shifts in the winds of circumstance. Less than ten years ago a gathering of scholars at the Newberry Library in Chicago lamented the lack of support for their disciplines, and drew up an impressive list of tools and monographs needed to advance the field. Presumably the specialists returned to their campuses refreshed by this heady and cathartic experience of thinking adventurously, but they found no change there in the attitudes of their university administrators or the majority of their colleagues, who still believed that Latin America was an area of peripheral value; the professors were not discharged, of course, for they had tenure, but the promise of the early flurry of Latin American area developments that had occurred in the 1940's was not fulfilled.
This paper is based upon the Hackett Memorial Lecture delivered by the author at the University of Texas on May 10, 1966.
l Cline, Howard F., ed., Latin American Studies in the United States (Washington: Hispanic Foundation, Library of Congress, 1959).Google Scholar
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10 See Hamlin, D. L. B., The Latin Americas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960).Google Scholar
11 Quoted from an article by Dmytryshu, Basil and Gilmore, Jessie L., “The Monroe Doctrine: a Soviet View,” by Dozer, Donald M., ed., The Monroe Doctrine (New York: Knopf, 1966), p. 199.Google Scholar See also Oswald, J. Gregory, “Contemporary Soviet Research on Latin America,” Latin American Research Review, II, no. 2 (1966), 77–96 Google Scholar: and Ely, Roland T., “El Panorama Interamericano visto por Investigadores de la U.R.S.S.”, Journal of Inter-American Studies, VIII, No. 2 (April 1966), 294–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Saito, Hiroshi and Ikushima, Yoshiro, “Estados sobre o Brasil e América Latina No Japáo,” Sociología, XX (São Paulo, 1958), 222–232.Google Scholar As an example, see the handsomely produced volume Andes: the Report of the University of Tokyo Scientific Expedition to the Andes in 1958 (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan Sha, 1961). This well-documented study is in Japanese, with captions and references also in English. The detailed sectional maps are excellent, and some of the many hundred illustrations are in color.
13 Dwight B. Heath, “Peasants, Politics, and Drinking Patterns: The Changing Social Structure of Inter-Ethnic Drinking in Two Bolivian Communities” (Mimeographed Paper).
14 Leonard, Irving A., “A Survey of Personnel and Activities in Latin American Aspects of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Twenty Universities of the United States,” Notes on Latin American Studies, No. 1 (April 1943), p. 45.Google Scholar
15 Jorge Graciarena, “Some considerations on International Co-operation and the Recent Development of Sociological Research in Latin America,” paper for the International Conference on Comparative Social Research in Developing Countries, Buenos Aires, September 7-16, 1964.
16 Bushnell, David, “The United States Air Force and Latin American Research,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, VII, No. 2 (April 1965), 161–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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20 Morón, A History of Venezuela. Ed. and trans, by Street, John (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 217.Google Scholar
21 Peter H. Smith, “The Politics of Argentine Beef, 1880-1940” (Columbia University Dissertation, 1966), pp. 347-348. As an example of the special problems that have arisen when scholars conduct research in other countries, the experience of the Foreign Area Fellowship Program sent out to its fellows in June, 1966, the following statement on “Factors Affecting Research abroad”:
Within recent months, it has become evident that certain research-connected problems which have traditionally confronted scholars working abroad are growing more acute. To insure that these problems are managed with the highest standards of professional competence, it is recommended that the following factors be considered when planning or actually conducting research projects:
1. Research topics which are sensitive for political or other reasons may seriously complicate overseas investigations. When sensitive topics are involved, visas are often not granted by foreign governments, or if they are, the types of materials necessary to prepare a dissertation are seldom made available upon arrival in the host country. Furthermore, even when materials on sensitive topics are accessible, the complications attending their use are rather difficult to cope with and sometimes result in situations which adversely affect the entire research milieu in the country involved.
2. If a scholar desires to conduct research on a sensitive topic, consideration should be given to a possible alternate project in the earliest stages of preliminary dissertation research.
3. Those projects which involve extensive interviewing require a good knowledge of the foreign language to be used, as well as proper training in interviewing and measuring techniques. In those cases where these prerequisites are not met, foreign scholars, officials and archivists may take serious objection to the work being done, and so may restrict a researcher's ability to complete his project.
4. In many countries, scholars, political personalities and government officials have been repeatedly approached by successive researchers in connection with similar or related research topics. Although these persons have generally exerted every effort to be helpful, competing time demands make it difficult, if not impossible, for busy persons to make themselves available for recurrent interviews. Advance introductions and appointments are apt to be of vital importance in this connection.
5. Many people in foreign countries have objected to the fact that American researchers who draw heavily upon personal and official documents often leave the country without making the results of their research available either in English or the local language, even when such action can be appropriately taken. For example, North American scholars have been criticized in Latin America for refusing to leave, or to send copies of, IBM cards containing the coded results of interviews. Such refusal has been interpreted as a form of exclusive intellectual exploitation of what are, in the ultimate analysis, limited research sources. The publication of research results in the local language may be given serious consideration as a way of minimizing such criticism, or at the least, copies of articles in English may be widely circulated, as appropriate, to journals and individuals in the countries concerned.
6. Research scholars from the United States have become much more visible in developing countries in recent years, because of their numbers, their relative affluence, and their tendency to concentrate in capital cities. In addition, there have been a few cases of inappropriate uses of research methods that have been widely publicized and have created attitudes destructive of the prospects of other research students. Consequently, research opportunities are in danger of disappearing in countries in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Therefore, United States scholars should make every effort to conduct themselves so that a maximum of open research possibilities remain available to those researchers who may follow them.
7. It is becoming increasingly apparent that it is highly desirable, and it may now be necessary, that a researcher establish some mutually satisfactory relationship with a university or similar institution in the foreign country where research will be conducted. Such affiliation should not, of course, involve control by the institution over the scholar or his research project.
The Foreign Area Fellowship Program has consistently held that the responsibility for selecting a research proposal rests with the scholar himself and his academic advisers. Similarly, the actual conduct of a given research project has always been viewed as falling within the purview of the researcher in the field. No change in this position is contemplated. However, because of suggestions made by numerous professors, former Fellows, and friendly persons abroad, it has been deemed appropriate to call the above points to the attention of individuals planning to undertake field research, especially in the developing countries.
22 Comment by Dr. Flores on article by Harrison, John P., “Latin American Studies: Library Needs and Problems,” The Library Quarterly, XXXV, no. 4 (October 1965), 342.Google Scholar
23 Potash, Robert A., “A Commentary of Two Papers,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XLIII (August 1963), 394.Google Scholar
24 Morse, Richard, “Urbanization in Latin America,” Latin American Research Review, I, no. 1 (1965), 7.Google Scholar
25 Graña, César, “Cultural Nationalism: The Idea of Historical Destiny in Spanish America,” Social Research, XXIX (Winter, 1962), 396.Google Scholar
26 Jones, , “Uses of the Past in General Education,” Harvard Educational Review (Winter, 1966), p. 7.Google Scholar
27 See the author's “The Dawn of Conscience in America: Spanish Experiments and Experiences with the Indians in the New World,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 107, no. 2 (1963), 83-92.
28 Jones, , “Uses of the Past in General Education,” pp. 10–11.Google Scholar
29 La disputa del Nuevo Mundo. Historia de una polémica, 1750-1900 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960).
30 “Francisco Xavier Balmis and the Introduction of Vaccination to Latin America,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, XI (1942), 543-560; XII (1943), 73-101. The quotation appears on p. 543.
31 See the author's “Early American History as a Part of the History of Western Civilization,” The John Carter Brown Library Conference. A Report of the Meeting held in the Library at Brown University on the Early History of the Americas (Providence, Rhode Island, 1961), pp. 35-37.
