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The Study of Latin American History Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Magnus Mörner
Magnus Mörner*
Affiliation:
Institute of Latin American Studies, Stockholm
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It requires a lot of temerity to analyze in a few pages such a great and complicated topic as “The Study of Latin American History Today,” especially if one is not Richard Morse. My only vantage point is a rather varied experience. A European historian, I am an autodidact in things Latin American. Since the late 1940s, I have visited and done some research in most of the countries of Latin America, and Spain. I have had the privilege of teaching Latin American history at five major United States universities during a total of five and a half years. At the present time I find myself once again in Europe. Thus I am familiar with the increased European interest in Latin American studies during recent years as well as with the various factors which still hamper us in our job. From the psychological point of view I have probably become a kind of mestizo, a Swedish-Latin-North American blend. Though at ease in any of three environments, I have the feeling of being to some extent an outsider even in the country of my birth. After this presentation-confession I shall first survey the current situation in broad terms. The second point will be to discuss the purpose of the study of Latin American history and finally, to recommend some norms of policy.

Type
Reports
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 1973 , pp. 75 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

This article is an expanded and revised version of an address to the Fifth Annual Conference of the Southwestern Council of Latin American Studies (SCOLAS) at the University of Texas at Austin on 14 April 1972, when I was serving as a Visiting Professor of History there. Some of the issues have also been dealt with in U-länderna i modern historievetenskap (The Developing Countries in Modern Historical Science, Stockholm, 1970), a book I wrote in collaboration with Lennart Limberg and K. R. Haellquist. It has not appeared in any other language. (MM).

Ed's note: LARR hopes to publish in a future issue a more detailed Report dealing with Latin American research and studies in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R.

References

Notes

1. In footnote 1 of his article, “The Care and Grooming of Latin American Historians, or: Stop the Computers, I Want to Get Off,” In: Stanley R. Ross, ed., Latin America in Transition. Problems in Training and Research, 27-40 (Albany, N.Y., 1970), Richard Morse gives a list of his many previous pièces d'occasion on Latin American Studies.

2. Morse, op.cit., 33-34.

3. See the Appendix.

4. Günter Vollmer, Bevölkerungspolitik und Bevölkerungsstruktur im Vizekönigreich Peru zu Ende der Kolonialzeit (1741-1821). (Bad Homburg, Berlin & Zurich, 1967).

5. To mention my own experience, a couple of years ago I received a minor grant from the only bigsize foundation in my country to prepare a Swedish-Peruvian project on the evolution of agrarian structures since the eighteenth century in the Cuzco region. After having prepared a project which was approved by the experts consulted, in December 1972 I was refused the funds needed to carry it out. The reason was obviously competition with Swedish-focussed projects.

6. CEISAL will hold a conference in London, 26-29 September 1973, at which it will hopefully be firmly organized.

7. See the impressive state of research report, Investigaciones contemporáneas sobre historia de México. Memorias de la tercera reunión de historiadores mexicanos y norteamericanos, Oaxtepec, Morelos, 4-7 de noviembre de 1969. (Austin, Texas, 1971).

8. This point is stressed by Daniel Cosío Villegas, “History and the Social Sciences in Latin America,” in M. Diégues Júnior and Bryce Woods, eds., Social Science in Latin America, 120-137 (New York Sc London, 1967). When asked once why history is so boring, the Cuban historian Jose Luciano Franco gave an excellent reply: “La historia real, ese apasionante suceder diario, creador, jamás es aburrido: quienes somos definitivamente aburridos, somos los historiadores.” Quoted by Manuel Moreno Fraginals in his stimulating essay, “La historia como arma,” Diez años de la Revista Casas de las Américas 1960-1970, 61. (Havana, 1971).

9. Luis González, Pueblo en vilo. Microhistoria de San José de Gracia (México, 1968).

10. A good example is the group of young historians affiliated with the Consejo Superior Universitario Centroamericano (CSUCA) in San José de Costa Rica and working on the social and economic development of Central America between the 1820s and 1930.

11. For up-to-date surveys of Latin American libraries see Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 7 vols. (New York, 1968).

12. See La historia económica en América Latina, 2 vols. (México, 1972), the proceedings of a meeting of Latin American economic historians in Lima, 1970. The Mexican Enrique Florescano is the dynamic leader of the group. See also Francisco Iglésias, “A pesquisa históricano Brasil,” Revista de Histórica, 43: 373-415 (São Paulo, 1971), in which the need of a Brazilian data bank also for historical purposes is stressed.

13. “Studying Latin America: the Views of an ‘Old Christian’,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, 9: 43-64 (1967). Reproduced in part in Hanke, ed., History of Latin American Civilization. Sources and Interpretations, 2 vols. II, 510-515 (Boston, 1967).

14. “The Social History of Colonial Spanish America: Evolution and Potential,” LARR, 7: 1: 6-45 (1972), especially pp. 7-8.

15. The Historian's Craft. Transl., 10-11. (New York, 1953).

16. As the Polish historian Witold Kula puts it, the past does not explain the present “sans plus, mas não se lhe pode fazer abstração se se quer atingir explicações completas. Seria importante nao esquecer esta verdade básica.” “Historia e economia: a longa duração,” Estudos Históricos, Nr. 7, 187 (Marília, Brazil, 1968).

17. “Social Injustice: A Constant in Latin American History, 1492—,” Hanke, op cit., 2: 516-523.

18. As José Honório Rodrigues says: “… we produce national history and consume world history;” Hanke, op. cit., 2: 500. The peripherical role of Latin America in the nineteenth century world is well illustrated by the few and superficial references devoted to it by Marx in his enormous oeuvre. See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Materiales para la historia de América Latina (Córdoba, Argentina, 1972).

19. “Brazilian Historiography: Present Trends and Research Requirements,” in Diégues Júnior and Wood, op.cit., 217-240. Quote from p. 225.

20. Richard N. Adams, ed. and introduction by: Responsibilities of the Foreign Scholar to the Local Scholarly Community: Studies of U.S. Research in Guatemala, Chile and Paraguay; by Calvin P. Blair, Richard P. Schaedel, and James H. Street (n.p.p.), 1969.

21. “After Camelot” in Irving Louis Horowitz, ed., The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot. Studies in the Relationship Between Social Science and Practical Politics, 295-305, (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).

22. Richard P. Schaedel in Adams, op.cit., 70.

23. Adams, op.cit., 8. According to NACLA's Subliminal Warfare: The Role of Latin American Studies (New York, 1970), 14, the Adams recommendations “were largely geared to soothing scholars in the host country.” This seems to me an unfair characterization. Rather, radical scholars, too, would be well advised to follow them.

24. Historia contemporánea de América Latina (Madrid, 1969; rev. ed.; 1970). The book has appeared in Italian and Swedish, but not yet, as far as I know, in English.

25. Keith Griffin, Underdevelopment in Spanish America 48 (London, 1969).

26. Stanley Stein and Shane Hunt, “Principal Currents in the Economic Historiography of Latin America.” The Journal of Economic History, 31: 224-253 (New York, 1971). Quote from p. 250.

27. Warren Dean, “Sources for the Study of Latin American Economic History: The Records of North American Private Enterprises,” Latin American Research Review, 3:1: 79-86 (1968).

28. I have touched on this issue in my article, “Situación investigativa de las ciencias históricas y sociales en Cuba” in Estudios y documentos suecos sobre Cuba, 64-65 (Stockholm, 1971).

29. Harald Rublom, Svenka företag i Latinamerika. Etahleringsmönster och förhandlingstaktik 1900-1940. With a Summary in English (Uppsala, 1971).

30. It is interesting to notice that the introduction to the NACLA Research Methodology Guide (New York, 1970) does not even mention Latin America. Only chapter 5 is devoted to the Third World.

31. We should notice, however, Miles D. Wolpin's declaration in “Latin American Studies: For A Radical Approach,” The Journal of Developing Areas, 5: 327 (1971). He underscores that the radical researcher must be ready “to elaborate data which may be inconsistent with our belief or affective orientations.”

32. “History can and should be an instrument of political change,” declares José Honório Rodrigues in Diégues Júnior and Wood, op.cit., 225. In his book Vida e história, 7-15 (Rio de Janeiro, 1966) Rodrigues introduces the concept of História Combatente.

33. On the part of the United States an important message to this effect has already been taken. Since 1965 the Association of American University Presses in collaboration with the National University of Mexico has sponsored CILA—Centro Interamericano de Libros Académicos—to quicken the flow of scholarly books in both directions. More has to be done, however, especially by European countries. LASA also plans to sponsor the distribution in Latin America of United States doctoral dissertations about that area.

34. Adams, op.cit., 9.

35. Following my own prescription I have prepared a Spanish version of the present article in the hope of publishing it in Latin America.

36. For information about Latin Americanism in Asia and Africa see Martin H. Sable, Latin American Studies in the Non-Western World and Eastern Europe (Metuchen, N.J., 1970); on Africa also Luis Beltrán, La cultura hispánica en Africa Negra (Kisangani, Congo). On Japan, see “Latin American Studies in Japan” by Gustavo Andrade, LARR, 8: 1: (1973). The small Latin Americanist groups in Eastern Europe outside the Soviet Union have already adopted the systematic use of Spanish-Portuguese. See, e.g., the introduction to Estudios Latinoamericanos (Wroclaw, 1972), published by the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences.