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PanamáFive hundred years ago this fall Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. Climbing alone to the high peak of a mountain, he saw a glimmer of what was then called “the South Sea.” Four days later, he and his men reached the ocean and claimed all of what was to become the nation of Panamá for Spain....continue reading the editor's letter |
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WaterWhen I’m feeling a bit blue on dark winter days, words about water flow into my head: John Masefield’s “I must go down to the sea again” or the 23rd Psalm’s quiet rhythms, “He leadeth me beside still waters.” A walk down Riverside Drive or a stroll along the beach in Cartagena or Coney Island...continue reading the editor's letter |
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UniversitiesI learned about universities on the barricades. Well, not exactly. I was a philosophy student at Barnard—the women’s college at Columbia University—when the uprising began in 1968. Students, including my boyfriend and several classmates, took over buildings to protest a gym planned for nearby Morningside Heights....continue reading the editor's letter |
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Sports!I hate sports. As a little girl, I was always stuck on the softball outfield—the practical way of including a chubby, clumsy kid in the mandatory physical education class. I’d rather have been inside reading my favorite poet Edna St. Vincent Millay......continue reading the editor's letter |
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Organized CrimeThe couple had fled their Salvadoran homeland to North Carolina during the brutal war of the 1980s. They learned English, worked hard, started a successful business and became U.S. citizens. They sent money back home monthly, although not much...continue reading the editor's letter |
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BoliviaI’d almost forgotten about Che. Well, not the triumphant Che of Havana, but the Che who fought unsuccessfully in Bolivia—even though I’d been moved by Steven Soderbergh’s Che: Part II a while back. But in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, my host Nigel Asquith from Natura Bolivia...continue reading the editor's letter |
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JournalismI always assumed Róbinson Rojas was Dominican. For decades now, I’ve been carrying around his words or posting them on my walls. I was given these inspiring words by my dear friend, the photojournalist Ramón DeJesús Lora, then...continue reading the editor's letter |
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GuatemalaThe diminutive indigenous woman in her bright embroidered blouse waited proudly for her grandson to receive his engineering degree. His mother, also dressed in a traditional flowery blouse—a huipil, took photos with a...continue reading the editor's letter |
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ArchitectureMany a year ago, when I first came to work at DRCLAS, I hosted a summer intern from South Carolina. She was even newer to Cambridge than I was. On her first day at work, I sent her to mail a FedEx package, instructing her that…continue reading the editor's letter |
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FILMFor me, movies are magic. And movie going is an emotional experience or maybe I should say, two types of emotional experiences. I also delight in going with friends, passing the popcorn and engaging in the lively debate of a shared experience afterwards...continue reading the editor's letter |
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The Sky AboveProfessor Don Pfister came to my office the other day to discuss this issue of ReVista. I was wearing one of my favorite pieces of jewelry, a black-and-white speckled necklace from Colombia.…continue reading the editor's letter |
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The SixtiesMy boyfriend Jim and I were watching television in a smoky working-class bar in Cuernavaca, Mexico, that July 20, 1969. I can't remember Neil Armstrong's words...continue reading the editor's letter |
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VenezuelaLong, long ago before I ever saw the skyscrapers of Caracas, long before I ever fished for cachama in Barinas with Pedro and Aída, long before I ever dreamed of ReVista, let alone an issue on Venezuela, I heard a song…continue reading the editor's letter |
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Puerto RicoI'm often asked what was the first country I ever visited in Latin America. I stumble and have to think before answering. That’s not because I have a bad memory. I'm just not sure what counts as Latin America. Outside of my predominantly...continue reading the editor's letter |
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ViolenceSuddenly, I was seeing violence everywhere. Just after I started thinking about this issue of ReVista, I went to a sweet documentary film about Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, who captured the famous iconic image of Che Guevara…continue reading the editor's letter |
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Dance!We were little black cats with white whiskers and long tails. One musical number from my one and only dance performance—in the fifth grade—has always stuck in my head. It was called "Hernando’s Hideaway," a rhythm I was told was a tango…continue reading the editor's letter |
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BrazilBrazil is different. Brazil is huge. Brazil is colorful. Brazil is magic. In Brazil, the people speak Portuguese instead of Spanish. I’ve written a variation of these phrases some five times over, trying to decide if they are clichés. I’ve only visited Brazil four times...continue reading the editor's letter |
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Natural DisastersMy very first reporting trip to Latin America was to cover the aftermath of a natural disaster. Hurricane Fifi had smashed into Honduras in the fall of 1974, and my neighbro Angela Acosta-Wagner had mobilized our community in Lakeland....continue reading the editor's letter |
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Social EnterpriseThe red and orange leaves of autumn drift past my window. It’s hard to believe that more than two months have gone by since I returned to ReVista from a year’s sabbatical on a Fulbright Fellowship in Colombia. The view out my ...continue reading the editor's letter |
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ElectionsA quarter century ago, ReVista could not have published a special issue devoted to analyzing open and competitive elections in Latin America. ReVista did not exist then (it was founded in 2000), but even if it had existed, an elections...continue reading the director's letter |
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Flora and FaunaThe blue New England sky shed a diffuse light through the leaves of the trees in the ample DRCLAS yard at 61 Kirkland. I was scurrying from the office, intent on going wherever I was going. Noel "Missy" Holbrook, a member of the DRCLAS ....continue reading the editor's letter |
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U.S. Foreign PolicyThis was supposed to have been the anniversary issue. The only problem was that with the temporary cutback in ReVista’s schedule from three to two times a year, it is no longer the anniversary year of 2004: 25 years since the Sandinista Revolution....continue reading the editor's letter |
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The ChildrenA blue whale spurts water joyfully into an Andean sky on my office door. A rainbow glitters among a feast of animals and palm trees. Geometrical lightning tosses tiny houses into the air with the force of a tropical hurricane....continue reading editor's letter |
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ChileI was hesitant to do an issue on Chile when I had other topics broader and richer in content. Although in a way Chile seems like an obvious choice because of the DRCLAS Regional office there, I felt there were other priorities in terms of substance....continue reading editor's letter |
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ColombiaWhen I first started working on this ReVista issue on Colombia, I thought of dedicating it to the memory of someone who had died. Murdered newspaper editor Guillermo Cano had been my entrée into Colombia when I won an Inter American Press Association fellowship in 1977....continue reading editor's letter |
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CityscapesI have to confess. I fell passionately, madly, in love at first sight. I was standing on the edge of Bogotá's National Park, breathing in the rain-washed air laden with the heavy fragrance of eucalyptus trees. I looked up towards the mountains over the red-tiled roofs...continue reading editor's letter |
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Human RightsDuring the day, I edit story after story on human rights for the Fall issue of ReVista. During the evening, I work on my biography of Irma Flaquer, a courageous Guatemalan journalist who was disappeared in 1980...continue reading editor's letter |
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Giving and VolunteeringThe floods were raging in the rivers near author Maria Eugenia Choque's home in La Paz, Bolivia. ReVista writers suffered viruses, both of the technological and biological types....continue reading editor's letter |
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TourismAs tourists to Mexico, we were watching the fuzzy black-and-white television image of Neil Armstrong when he became the first man to set foot on the moon July 20, 1969...continue reading editor's letter |
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DemocracyEllen Schneider's description of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in her provocative article on Nicaraguan democracy sent me scurrying to my oversized scrapbooks of newspaper articles. I wanted to show her that rather than being perceived as a caudillo...continue reading editor's letter |
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Mexico in TransitionYou are holding in your hands the first issue of ReVista, formerly known as DRCLAS NEWS. Over the last couple of years, DRCLAS NEWS has examined...continue reading editor's letter
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Food in the AmericasAs a correspondent in Latin America for 14 years, I covered revolutions, elections, hurricanes, and a wide variety of other events. Yet, the single story that produced the most reaction was an op-ed feature for the Wall Street Journal describing how I learned to cook amidst the...continue reading editor's letter |
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Art in the AmericasIs there such a thing as Latin American art? Can the energies of thousands of creative visionaries, expressed in every kind of medium over a period of centuries and across a geography as varied as any in the world, be considered in a single category...continue reading introductory essay |
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Discovering L@tinasIn California hospitals today, the name most often given to baby boys is Jose. No wonder there is talk of Mexico's reconquista of that vast area of the Southwest that it had lost to the United States in 1848. The treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that officially transferred...continue reading introductory essay |
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Health and EquityThe state of health of the Western Hemisphere, I am pleased to say, is improving, distinguished readers. Every country in the Americas is experiencing a decline in child mortality, a decrease in fertility rates and increased life expectancy in the last decade...continue reading introductory essay |
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Cuba TodayCuba is in. Things Cuban are fashionable and in vogue-what Bonnie Raitt suggested in her lyric "Cuba is Way Too Cool." Cuban recorded music has once more claimed its place as a dominant presence in the U.S. market. Irakere, Los Van Van, Cubanisimo...continue reading introductory essay |
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EducationWhenever one asks about ways of struggling against impossible odds in Latin America, one is told not to worry because no "hay mal que dure cien anos" (no evil lasts one hundred years). The saying points in the direction of passive resistance since....continue reading introductory essay |
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The EconomyLatin America can take a punch. Its endurance of a whole series of rather large shocks in the last two years is a tribute to the region's extensive structural reforms. The consequences a decade ago would likely have been much worse. However, this resilience also reflects...continue reading introductory essay |
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The InternetThis issue of the DRCLAS News is devoted to the Internet's effect on Latin America. As the person in charge of all Harvard News Office Web sites and the editor of a daily newspaper produced in May 1998 for the Second International Harvard Conference on the Internet and Society...continue reading introductory essay |
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Women in Latin AmericaWe drove up into the residential hills of Villa Hermosa, overlooking the city of Guatemala, searching for the house amongst the many white-stucco, high-walled mansions. I asked the taxi-driver to wait to make sure this was the address the colonel's secretary....continue reading introductory essay |
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On Social JusticeThis issue of DRCLAS NEWS focuses on the theme of social justice, a theme inextricably linked with our children and the future of Latin America. So often we who study the lives of children or work with them as, say, teachers or nurses or doctors...continue reading introductory essay |
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The EnvironmentThis issue of the DRCLAS NEWS deals with some of the environmental problems of Latin America, one of the priorities of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. The challenges, as evidenced by the diversity of articles in this newsletter...continue reading introductory essay |
