̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Argentina

Young leaders from UK and Latin America tackle future at Shaping Horizons

plc32 — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 12:18:09 +0000

They will explore how emerging technologies like those underpinning genomics, artificial intelligence, clean energy, and smart cities can be used and regulated to create a more equitable and sustainable global community as well as how to encourage sustainable leadership across disciplines and move beyond traditional diplomacy to address global challenges like climate change and social inequalities.

Shaping Horizons 2019 is a Summit and Action Programme rooted in science, policy, and innovation and will strengthen ties and build relationships between young Future Leaders and Senior Leaders from the UK and Latin America. ̽��ֱ��delegates have been selected from across academia, industry, and government.

Professor David Cardwell, FREng, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategy and Planning at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, welcomed delegates at the start of the Summit on behalf of the ̽��ֱ��.

“On every front, the ̽��ֱ�� has been and continues to be engaged with Latin America, including the pleasure of hosting this fantastic summit, Shaping Horizons, where the mission is to empower and promote youth, create networks and to drive change,” Cardwell said.

̽��ֱ��week will culminate with the Future Leaders pitching for prize money to support their own innovative social impact projects they have developed through mentorship and learning during the Summit.

Winners will be supported in further developing and launching their projects through the Action Programme which will follow on from the Summit.

Nigel Baker, OBE MVO, Head of the Latin America Department at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office told delegates that all their ideas would help shape the future.

“Shaping Horizons is absolutely driven by the sense of entrepreneurship, innovation, and ideas of the young people involved. It is going to be fascinating to see the proposals that are coming out,” Baker said.

“There are 24 different teams and there are going to be some spectacular proposals and ideas. Some will win prizes, some will not, but I suspect that all of those ideas are going to be applicable in the future.”

Shaping Horizons is a non-profit initiative organised at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge with the support of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, and the Cambridge Hub of Global Shapers Community, which is an initiative of the World Economic Forum.

Shaping Horizons was founded by Dr Matias Acosta, a UK-Canada Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy, and Theo Lundberg, a NanoDTC PhD Student in the Department of Physics.

“Shaping Horizons was founded to promote sustainability using global, cross-disciplinary cooperation as our driving force,” Acosta said.

“We are a team of 40 undergraduates and academics from across more than 20 departments from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge bringing this initiative forward. Our goal is to build a shared and sustainable future between Latin America and the UK.

"We will be providing more than £30,000 in support for cooperative bilateral projects and also have designed a continuous mentorship programme to maximize the chance of success of each of the ideas.”

More than 100 future leaders from the UK and Latin America have gathered at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to discuss the future of work and education in an increasingly global digital era at this year’s Shaping Horizons summit.

Shaping Horizons was founded to promote sustainability using global, cross-disciplinary cooperation as our driving force.

Shaping Horizons founder Dr Matias Acosta

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‘ ̽��ֱ��greatest director in the world right now’ begins residency at Centre for Film and Screen

sjr81 — Fri, 04 May 2018 11:55:02 +0000

Lucrecia Martel comes to the Centre as this year’s Filmmaker in Residence from 5-20 May, following in the footsteps of Gianfranco Rosi (2017) and Joanna Hogg (2016).

A retrospective of her feature films — the first to be held in the UK—has been jointly organised between the Centre for Film and Screen and the Arts Picturehouse. Martel will be present following each screening for conversation and Q&A.

Martel, who lives and works in Argentina, is one of international cinema’s major stylists. Her provocative films treat questions of family, childhood, sexuality, belonging, nation, class, historical memory, and colonialism. In a cinema that is both sensually immersive and politically attuned, Martel looks at the world in a way that acknowledges mystery and prompts criticism.

Dr John David Rhodes, Director of the Centre for Film and Screen said: “ ̽��ֱ��residencies offer our students, staff and our community both inside and outside the ̽��ֱ�� the opportunity to engage with serious filmmakers of the highest order, all of them crucially important figures in the unfolding history of contemporary cinema.

“ ̽��ֱ��residencies also offer the filmmakers the opportunity to develop and reconsider their practices in the context of the vibrant scholarly and intellectual ecology that is unique to Cambridge.”

Described by Vogue as ‘the greatest director in the world right now’, Martel is the director of four acclaimed films and a number of award-winning shorts. After almost a decade after her last full-length feature film, Martel returned as director of the critically-lauded Zama in 2017.

Based on the 1956 novel by Antonio Di Benedetto, the film is a period drama relating the story of a 17th century Spanish officer, separated from his wife and family, and awaiting a transfer from a remote area of Paraguay to Buenos Aires.

Shining a light on colonialism and class dynamics, the film won almost universal acclaim from film critics in South America, and was chosen as Argentina’s nomination for Best Foreign Film at the 2018 Academy Awards.

Martel will be resident at the ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Film and Screen for more than two weeks, during which she will be offering a sequence of seminars on her filmmaking practice.

Symposium

18 May, 10am-4pm, McCrum Lecture Theatre, Corpus Christi College.

Speakers: Lucy Bollington (Cambridge), Catherine Grant (Birkbeck), Rosalind Galt (KCL), Debbie Martin (UCL).

Full details - TBC

Screenings

̽��ֱ��screenings will all be held at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse

Tuesday 8 May at 6pm - ̽��ֱ��Swamp (La Ciénaga)

Thursday 10 May ay 6pm - ̽��ֱ��Holy Girl (La niña santa)

Tuesday 15 May at 6:30pm - ̽��ֱ��Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza)

Thursday 17 May at 6pm - Zama

One of Argentina’s and Latin America’s pre-eminent filmmakers begins a 16-day residency at Cambridge’s Centre for Film and Screen from tomorrow (May 5).

Lucrecia is a crucially important figure in the unfolding history of contemporary cinema.

John David Rhodes

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Pre-Inka elites and the social life of fragments

fpjl2 — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 08:45:01 +0000

̽��ֱ��town of Borgatta was built in the Argentinean Andes sometime in the tenth century. It grew to a community of several hundred residential compounds before being abandoned around 1450 when the Inkan Empire claimed the region. In the ruins, archaeologist Dr Elizabeth DeMarrais has been hunting for signs of pre-Inkan elites.

Her interests lie in the dynamics of social groups in the past – how did society work? Were there ‘pecking orders’ or hierarchies? When did the ‘politics’ of daily existence begin to characterise human societies, from the ancient to our own? ̽��ֱ��excavation of Borgatta, which she led, was to yield some surprising results.

“It’s a big site, with a population that would have numbered in the low thousands,” she explains. “We therefore expected to find evidence of leaders, of rich and poor – as in our own society. But we were surprised to see only limited social differentiation in the materials we uncovered.”

She studies the fragments – the archaeology of daily life – that societies left behind. “We thought we’d see socio-economic differences reflected in diet through remains of animal bones, or in dwelling locations, or in material accumulation,” she explains.

̽��ֱ��team found evidence of craft production occurring across the entire settlement. But no specialists could be identified: no equivalent of a blacksmith’s workshop, or a dedicated weaver or a kiln technician. And no wealthy elites with stockpiles of luxury goods. Yet things were being made in most houses in town – things that defied easy classification.

“Think of the feather cloaks of Hawaiian chiefs, or the swords of Bronze Age warriors,” adds DeMarrais. “These were objects of wealth and power, commissioned from specialist technicians for elites who controlled production and often also trade. This commodification is typical in hierarchical societies.

“In Borgatta, however, we found evidence of nonspecialist ‘multicrafting’ right across the community: with each household using expedient bone and stone toolkits to create a range of objects – from baskets to cooking pots, spindle whorls to wooden bowls – in their own idiosyncratic styles.”

Each residence produced its own items. Household members shared skills and mixed media – creating distinctive artistry in the process.

“Archaeologists like to classify, and the diversity of the Borgatta materials was initially frustrating. However, ideas from social theory helped us think about the significance of this variation, including contexts of production and social roles,” says DeMarrais.

̽��ֱ��approach to making things in Borgatta has led her to believe that its people depended upon “a different kind of social glue” – one based on individual relationships, rather than ordered by social rank.

“Objects were gifted on a personal basis to build connections, rather than being funnelled up to a leader who represented the group.” She describes this as a ‘heterarchy’: a society ordered along the lines of decentralised networks and shared power.

“Heterarchy was described in the 1940s as a means of understanding the structure of the human brain: ordered but not hierarchically organised. In a human society, it highlights a structure where different individuals may take precedence in key activities – religion, trade, politics – but there is a fluidity to power relations that resists top-down rule.

“One can think of it as a form of confederacy – similar in some respects to the governance of Cambridge colleges, for example,” says DeMarrais.

Artefacts tell the story of this laterally ordered society. Distinctive clay urns with painted motifs showing serpents, frogs and birds, as well as human facial features, were found to contain the skeletal remains of young infants.

̽��ֱ��urns were buried under the floors of houses. DeMarrais suggests that the funeral rites of babies involved displaying urns in the community as part of an extended process of mourning, before they were returned to the residences.

Some urns had the rim extending above the floor, to allow ongoing access to the contents. “In the Andes, mortuary practices involved extended interaction with remains that sustained a sense of connection between the living and the dead.”

̽��ֱ��decorated urns were the most striking pieces of material culture excavated at Borgatta. Adults were simply buried in groups of three or four outside the home, while other children were interred in old cooking pots called ‘ollas’.

Why were the burial vessels of certain infants so distinctive? “ ̽��ֱ��emotions around such premature loss may have been intense. But emotion is also culturally constructed. Would our grief be the same as their grief?” asks DeMarrais.

“These urns may have been intended to evoke emotions. In the absence of centralised authority, we would expect that rituals involving display of objects and the inculcation of shared emotions were an important means of social cohesion.”

There is little standardisation of the urns. Borgatta artisans exercised considerable freedom, says DeMarrais, combining design elements in novel ways. “Each urn, with its individual qualities, may have referenced the unique infant interred inside. But the diversity of motifs also reflects the localised character of social ties within a heterarchical society.”

̽��ֱ��shape of some painted urn motifs hinted at design constraints faced by weavers, supporting the ‘multi-crafters’ idea. “We think this similarity suggests that patterns first appeared on textile, and were then transferred to the urns by individuals with experience in both crafts.”

As an archaeologist you have to accept you will never have the definitive answers. We work with fragments.
Elizabeth DeMarrais

̽��ֱ��things observed in Borgatta suggest the lives of artisans in this heterarchy were more varied and creative, given the diversity of social roles objects had to play. ̽��ֱ��things of the Inka Empire, however, were made by specialist artisans whose skill level was high, but who were tightly constrained by the state in their artistic expression.

Neither society had a writing system, so material culture was vital for communication. And for the Inkas, a central aim was expressing power through an identifiable ‘brand’.

“ ̽��ֱ��Inkas had rules about who could wear and own what, according to status. Inka objects and architecture were immediately recognisable – like a Coca-Cola bottle in our world. This is, in part, how the Inkas managed to integrate roughly 12 million people across 80 ethnic groups without a writing system.”

Whereas Inkans had specialists who worked to formulae, each object made in Borgatta may well have had numerous ‘authors’ through multicrafting in household workshops. DeMarrais envisions a workshop environment similar to a tech start-up’s open-plan office: “people with different skill-sets pitch ideas and collaborate to create new products to adapt to a changing world”.

̽��ֱ��Department of Archaeology’s Material Culture Laboratory, which DeMarrais runs with her colleague Professor John Robb, takes a ‘Borgattan approach’. Researchers working on artefacts from Ancient Egypt to Anglo-Saxon England come together to conduct comparative analyses, and debate how ‘things’ mediated social relations in the past.

“We ask why humans put their energy into particular objects,” explains DeMarrais. “We look for commonalities – from religion to bureaucracies – as well as differences. We ask what happens when you look at an object through a different theoretical lens, whether economic, political, ideological or ontological.”

“What you find – as Elizabeth’s work shows beautifully – is that social life works materially,” says Robb. “Whether it is a government trying to exert its authority, villagers organising their lives to meet their own needs, or individuals remembering and feeling emotions about their own history, things are the medium of the whole process.”

“In the end,” adds DeMarrais, “it’s about squeezing as much information as we can from things people have left behind to build a picture of human lives across time. As an archaeologist you have to accept you will never have the definitive answers. We work with fragments.”

Objects unearthed in the Andes tell new stories of societies lacking hierarchical leadership in the time before the Inka Empire.

Distinctive clay urns with painted motifs showing serpents, frogs and birds, as well as human facial features, were found to contain the skeletal remains of young infants.

Museo Arqueológico de Cachi

Urns from the Museo Arqueológico de Cachi in Argentina

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Falklands/Malvinas: A national cause

bjb42 — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:44:46 +0000

A bleak archipelago in the South Atlantic, with a population of around 3,000 and temperatures that rarely rise above 13 degrees, there seems little to commend the Falklands, or Islas Malvinas. Offshore oil reserves have aroused new economic possibilities in the region, but the islands’ main industries remain sheep farming, fishing and tourism. Many justifiably wonder why these rocks are the subject of such bitter diplomacy or why, in 1982, the lives of more than 900 people had to be lost in their name.

Thirty years after the conflict, however, the debate between Britain and Argentina over who owns the Falklands/Malvinas shows little sign of abating – indeed, the anniversary of the war has reignited tensions between the two. At the same time, their attitudes are hardly the same. While Britain continues to stress its commitment to the islanders’ right to self-determination, popular interest in the UK is nothing compared with the passions that the Malvinas arouse in Argentina.

There, when the Government calls for negotiations with the British, it is guaranteed huge public support. In Argentina, memorials to the war and posters reasserting the country’s claim to the islands are a common sight, while young people often get tattoos of the Malvinas in the national colours. Such zeal seems odd in the UK, where a war over a territory that even the Prime Minister’s husband had to look up in an atlas at the time, now tends to feel long-since gone.

̽��ֱ��key to understanding Argentina’s very different point of view lies not with what the islands are, nor with natural resources. It is about what they represent. For many British people, the story of the Falklands War is a simple one, in which the country fought for its fellow-citizens and won. Argentinian ideas about the islands are usually much more complex, and often deeply emotional as well.

Since the war, a number of Argentinian writers, poets, academics and filmmakers have expressed, debated and critiqued those ideas and feelings in works which show how central the Malvinas are to the way Argentina perceives itself as a nation. Many of these works will be the subject of a conference at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge on June 9^th, five days before the 30^th anniversary of the conflict’s end. Academics from Britain, Argentina and elsewhere will join forces to discuss the war’s cultural legacy, because, they argue, doing so allows us to better understand the debates and controversies that the conflict has inspired in Argentina.

Although this will not be an event about rights to sovereignty, Dr Joanna Page, from the ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Latin American Studies and a specialist in Argentinian culture, argues that the current political debate over who owns the islands should be informed by a better understanding of the social and cultural weight of the Malvinas in Argentinian history.

“When I go to Argentina, people often ask me about what people here in Britain think about the islands,” she said. “If you tell them that most people don’t really think about them at all, that’s very difficult for them to understand. For them, the memory of the war runs much deeper, it reaches much further into how Argentina thinks of itself as a nation, and those ideas are still evolving to this day.”

“In spite of all the political wrangling, there is not a lot of understanding in Britain about why the islands are so important to Argentina. It doesn’t seem to make sense. When you start looking back through the history and the literature, however, you realize how far they are tied up with ideas about nationhood and identity. Exploring how the Malvinas are represented in cultural texts reveals a lot more about what motivates Argentina’s performance on the diplomatic stage.”

Page’s own research on evolving Argentinian perspectives on the war has been influenced by the work of the political scientist, Vicente Palermo, and the historian, Federico Lorenz, who will be one of the keynote speakers at the conference. Palermo argues that since the country achieved independence from Spain in 1810, its national identity has been founded on a number of clear, fundamental ideas.

Where some countries define themselves primarily in terms of a shared culture, for example, territorial integrity – the land itself – is core to Argentina’s sense of national identity. ̽��ֱ��nation’s destiny is often represented in history and literature as frustrated by colonial powers who have invaded the land and ransacked its riches. Another key notion that Palermo identifies in Argentine national identity is that of unity, of a cause that brings everyone together.

These ideas sit perfectly with that of the Islas Malvinas: a physical territory, usurped (according to one version of history) by imperial British forces, and now a cause which the nation can unanimously throw itself behind. If, for the British themselves, the islands are curious and remote, to the Argentinians they are a national icon.

As Lorenz shows, however, remembering the war in Argentina is a complicated question. It was perpetrated and lost by a deeply corrupt military junta, which had been in power since 1976 and was guilty of numerous human rights abuses. ̽��ֱ��invasion of the Malvinas was partly an opportunistic act to shore up its popularity. Some 650 Argentinians lost their lives as a result. Perhaps as many veterans again have killed themselves since.

̽��ֱ��dilemma this creates is whether to remember the Malvinas War as just another crime committed by the military regime, or as a legitimate popular and national cause. Argentina’s cultural output since the war reflects this dilemma. “In the years following 1982, the war was associated with the regime and many people distanced themselves from it,” Page said. “They forgot, rather conveniently, that they had poured on to the streets to support it when it began. After defeat, the war was seen as a horrible mistake and it was a relief to many that it could be seen as a chapter that closed with the end of the dictatorship.”

̽��ֱ��desire to forget has often been summed up in the term desmalvinizacion, a “don’t mention the war” mentality which presided in Argentina for many years. Literature and film of the period often portrayed the conflict not as a fight with the British, but as an expression of internal strife. ̽��ֱ��war for the Malvinas became a coincidental backdrop to a battle within Argentina itself.

Often, this was achieved by focusing on how officers (representing the junta) abused and even tortured their conscripts (the ordinary Argentinian) in the freezing conditions of the Malvinas. ̽��ֱ��1984 film Los chicos de la guerra, for example, showed frightened adolescents being press-ganged into an absurd conflict not of their making. In 2004, the award-winning Iluminados por el fuego picked up many of these themes.

Ironically, those who fought never approved of such works, even though they claimed to be telling their story. Los chicos de la guerra provoked an angry response from veterans, and even Iluminados por el fuego has come in for criticism because the memoir on which it is based was more ambiguous. As a book, it described exemplary conduct among officers as well. That was conveniently erased in a film which aimed to show the ordinary soldier as a victim of the government, and the war as a cruel and expensive mistake.

What fascinates scholars like Page is that other perspectives on the war are now starting to emerge more clearly. In historical and cultural narratives, the war has often been separated from the broader campaign to reclaim sovereignty over the islands, remembered, in the words of a popular saying, as una causa justa en manos bastarda - a righteous cause in the hands of bastards.

That cause is alive and kicking. Cultural texts on the war – novels, poetry, film and comics – reveal a huge range of responses to the legacy of the Malvinas war and Argentina’s continued campaign for sovereignty. Many do not simply stick to recording the events of the war or its impact then and now, but stray into fantasy or parody. In the view of Carlos Gamerro, another keynote speaker whose seminal novel, ̽��ֱ��Islands, comes out in English translation this month, the only way to understand the nationalist fictions in which Argentinians present the war is by giving it an obviously fictional treatment. If the history of the islands has been shaped by their mythical role in Argentine nationalism, then history and fiction are not so far apart.

Amid the recent political heat, Page hopes that the conference will help to cast a more dispassionate and analytical eye on the question of how the Malvinas have been imagined within Argentina. “There are people coming to Cambridge on the 9th who feel that the debates in Argentina about the Malvinas are still very restricted, and perhaps more so with the recent resurgence of nationalist feeling about the islands,” Page added. “Just as the past overshadows the politics of the present, the politics of the present define the ways in which we look at the past. One of the things we want to ask is what role culture plays in shaping history.”

Thirty years after it ended, the Falklands/Malvinas War still casts a long shadow over the lives of many Argentinians. A conference marking the anniversary next week will look at how it has been represented in history, literature, cinema and other media, showing how through these we can better understand why Argentina cares so much about the islands.

Exploring how the Malvinas are represented in cultural texts reveals a lot more about what motivates Argentina’s performance on the diplomatic stage.

Joanna Page

Wikimedia Commons.

Argentinian graves in East Falkland. While soldiers were often characterized as victims of the junta in the war’s immediate aftermath, they are now seen by many as patriots who died for a righteous cause.

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New perspectives on Latin America

lw355 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:44:59 +0000

Shaped by indigenous cultures and colonial influences, and with a contemporary history that encompasses acute political competition, social unrest and economic change, Latin America is a stimulating region for academic enquiry. Cambridge’s Centre of Latin American Studies – with its extensive library and one of the largest collections of Latin American films in the UK – provides a hub to link the many Latin Americanists based in faculties across the ̽��ֱ��.

For researchers such as Dr Charles Jones, who is based in the Department of Politics and International Studies and will take up the Directorship of the Centre at the start of the academic year, the region provides unique insights into international relations. ‘ ̽��ֱ��republics of Latin America became independent from their European colonisers 200 years ago,’ he explains. ‘After two centuries of separate existence, they are still largely dominated by elites of European descent, yet conduct their relations with one another very differently, holding distinctive views about international law, diplomacy and conflict resolution. Being able to compare regions is fascinating – it’s rather like being able to conduct a laboratory experiment in international relations.’

Research linked through the Centre is diverse: ranging from the study of modernist architecture to the colonial history of the Andes; and including, as highlighted here, cinema, violence, religion and multiculturalism.

Visualising Argentina

̽��ֱ��study of Latin American film and visual arts is a particular area of expertise at the Centre. Drs Joanna Page, Geoffrey Kantaris, Erica Segre and Rory O’Bryen are shedding light on the region’s vibrant creative legacy and opening up Latin American culture to a wider audience.

Dr Page has focused on Argentina, where the visual arts have responded in innovative ways to the experience of dictatorship, rising costs, unemployment and crime. Argentine cinema, which entered a boom period in the 1990s, is a compelling period of film-making for her, as she explains: ‘Film directors had to create a new kind of aesthetic, born of economic necessity. They often shot in black and white, on streets with natural lighting or in a single apartment, using friends as actors. ̽��ֱ��films register the anxieties and fears, civil unrest and social disintegration in contemporary Argentina.’

Other forms of visual culture have also been important vehicles for social and political critique in Argentina, especially in response to the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, a period of state-sponsored violence. ‘One example is the post-apocalyptic comic El Eternauta written by Héctor Oesterheld,’ she explains. ‘It typifies the intellectual and philosophical heritage of the science fiction genre in Argentina in engaging with political issues and was written before Oesterheld himself was kidnapped and became one of the disappeared.’

‘Argentina’s appropriation of science fiction is often heavily ironic given the genre’s strong association with European and North American imaginaries,’ adds Page. ‘ ̽��ֱ��result is a radical form of social critique.’

Violence in ‘Black Rome of the Americas’

Social anthropologist Dr Marta Magalhaes works in Salvador, Bahia. This UNESCO World Heritage Centre, once capital of colonial Brazil, is often referred to as the ‘Black Rome of the Americas’ because of its strong Afro-Brazilian heritage. ̽��ֱ��aim of her research was to examine what the ongoing urban regeneration of the colonial historic centre meant to its original, now-displaced, residents, but what she found instead was that Bahians wanted to speak about their experiences of violence in the city.

‘Brazil is a powerhouse – a resource-rich, technologically competent, vigorous democracy that has made great strides to close the gap between rich and poor,’ she explains. ‘But it also suffers from a persisting cocktail of violence, drugs, gangs and police intervention.’ In recent months, escalating violence in the favelas (shantytowns) of Rio de Janeiro has taken centre stage as police operations have attempted to take control.

Dr Magalhaes’ fieldwork in Salvador has uncovered a perception by its inhabitants of violence as a constant presence. ‘My research has focused on understanding what this sense of violence does to people’s relation to themselves. On my last trip, I was struck by the fact most Bahians I spoke to were articulating their views on violence as an epidemic, not as a war as in Rio. By sensing violence as an epidemic that can claim them at will, they became potential victims of this faceless phenomenon, effectively feeding the fear.’

As her work continues, she hopes that a better understanding of the complexities of how violence is perceived and affects different people in practice might inform discussions on the effective solutions to bring about its reduction.

Born again in Latin America

In recent decades, predominantly Catholic Latin America has undergone what has been referred to as ‘the largest mass conversion in history’, as Pentecostalism has grown explosively across the region and beyond its shores.

Dr David Lehmann, from the Department of Sociology and Acting Director of the Centre, was among the first to draw attention to this apparent revolution in Latin American culture: ‘Pentecostalism, which had been growing gradually, exploded into the public consciousness in the 1980s, and grew to number almost 20% of the population in some countries. In recent years, Latin American Pentecostalism has been exported, and churches such as the Brazilian Universal Church of the Kingdom of God are now present worldwide.’

Pentecostalism has long been associated with developing countries and migrant groups. ‘It gives a voice to the voiceless and supports people in setting themselves ambitious targets, emphasising salvation by worldly success in this world as opposed to the afterlife,’ explains Lehmann. His work asks what the economic and political implications are of the spread and what it tells us about globalisation.

Connected with the underlying theme of religion, Dr Lehmann is also working on multiculturalism in Latin America, focusing on how issues of ethnicity and cultural difference are accepted and promoted. Funded by the British Academy, he is documenting and understanding developments in Latin America, and looking from a Latin American standpoint at Europe’s struggle with the contested issue of multiculturalism.

‘Latin America deserves academic attention because it is a region where, despite serious issues of racial, ethnic and socioeconomic exclusion, it does not have the history and bitterness of racial confrontation in the modern period that we find in Europe and the United States,’ he explains. ‘That’s not to say that discrimination doesn’t exist. But knowledge of policies to counter racial exclusion, such as the almost unique investment in intercultural universities, should be of interest elsewhere in the world. We can learn from the Latin American experience.’

At the Centre of Latin American Studies, interdisciplinary research is offering a new perspective on the creativity, challenges and lessons that can be learned from Latin America.

We can learn from the Latin American experience.

Dr David Lehmann

Francisco Valdez, Rosario, Argentina

El Eternauta, Argentina

Legacy of El Libertador

For the past 40 years, the academic community has benefited from the arrival of distinguished Latin American scholars through the Simón Bolívar Chair in Latin American Studies.

̽��ֱ��Fellowship was established by the Venezuelan Government in memory of Simón Bolívar (El Libertador) – the foremost leader of Latin American independence in the 1820s – and has brought a host of illustrious figures to Cambridge. Among those who have taken up the Chair for a one-year teaching and research sabbatical are Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel prize in Literature, and sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who later became President of Brazil.

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