*from an address by Chuck Bergquist, LAS professor to 2003 graduating class on June 12, 2003
It is a special and quite personal honor for me to be chosen to officially congratulate you who are graduating from the University of Washington with a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies this year. It would be an honor to do so in any year because your hard work and successful completion of our program merits the respect of the Latin American Studies faculty and staff, as well as that of your family members and friends who are here to celebrate this achievement with you.
But for me, officially congratulating you this year is special for two
personal reasons. First, because 36 years ago, almost to the day, I was
in your shoes, graduating with a BA degree in Latin American Studies from
this university. Second, because this year I am retiring from the University,
and just this afternoon taught my last class as a regular faculty member.
I am, I believe, the only member of the Latin American Studies faculty
who is a product of our program. And although I confess I haven’t
done the research to verify it, I believe I was one of the very first
graduates of the program, which was founded in 1965.
One of the key founding members of the program, Professor Dauril Alden,
who is also retiring this year, is not here tonight. But Dauril put in
many more years than I (or anybody else among the Latin American Studies
faculty) teaching in the program. And his vision of what the program should
consist of is still reflected in the structure of the curriculum you have
just completed—a core of history courses, requirements in the social
sciences and humanities, and a decided emphasis on language training,
the equivalent of three years in two of the languages of the region.
I personally owe a great debt to Dauril’s guidance as a historian and a Latin Americanist. Dauril’s survey of Latin American history “hooked” me into the program, and he supervised my senior thesis and wrote the letters of recommendation that helped me get into graduate school. Much later, in 1989, he played an important role in my returning to the University of Washington to head the Latin American Studies program.
But before I talk briefly about that, I want to first describe to you the fate of Latin American Studies here in the intervening decades. It is important to do so, in part I think, because probably very few of you--and few of the current LAS faculty, for that matter--know very much about the history of the program you have just completed. And aspects of that history may be instructive, especially to you as you make the transition from college to your future activities, be they work toward an advanced educational or professional degree, or work in the private or public sector. As you are all well aware, these are uncertain times, not only politically but economically, and given the financial crisis facing this university, and the state of the national and world economies, the future of Latin American Studies here, as well as your own career prospects, are not as rosy as we all hoped they might be.
I can briefly summarize this history of the program by pointing to two
periods of growth separated by a period of decline and crisis during which
Latin American Studies virtually ceased to exist as a degree-granting
program within the university. The first period of growth came in the
1960s and early 1970s, an era of world, national, and local economic expansion
and of national concern over the Cuban Revolution. During this period
the numbers of LAS graduates expanded rapidly as did the university’s
Latin American studies faculty. In history, for example, Dauril Alden,
a specialist on colonial Latin America, was joined by Carl Solberg and
Carlos Gil, who specialized, respectively, on modern Spanish South America
and Mexico.
By the late 1970s and 1980s this period of expansion was over. The number
of students majoring in LAS declined and a budgetary crisis at the university
meant that the number of Latin Americanists on the faculty also fell.
When Carl Solberg died at a young age in the mid-1980s, for example, he
was not immediately replaced. At the same time, however, concern over
the Central American crisis led to renewed demands by students and faculty
for administrative support for Latin American Studies. And by the time
I returned to the University in 1989—after teaching in Latin American
Studies at Duke University for 18 years—renewed administrative support
and faculty and student commitment enabled us to reconstitute Latin American
Studies and in the course of the next decade turn it into the largest
of the area studies programs in the university.
We are now, of course, in another period of crisis. Despite high demand
by students, faculty attrition threatens to become severe and the future
of Latin American Studies at the university is again uncertain. For personal
and particular reasons, for example, all three of the historians in the
program have retired in the space of two years, and the university has
yet to authorize replacing any of them.
I recount this here in part because I believe you, the graduates of
our program, can play a special role in helping to convince the university
to maintain Latin American Studies and replace key faculty members as
they leave the university.
I also firmly believe in the importance of Latin American studies, not
only for the building a more peaceful and democratic Western Hemisphere
and more enlightened and effective U.S. policies at home and abroad. As
I’ve told the students who have enrolled in my courses in Latin
American history over the years, I believe that their study of Latin America
will ultimately reveal to them more about themselves, and about their
own society, than it will about Latin America itself.
I continue to believe that the major you have completed will stand you
in good stead in these troubled times. While I was at Duke we did a survey
of our graduates that revealed that their language skills alone provided
them a leg up in the competition for jobs and positions following graduation.
And I believe the interdisciplinary and comparative thinking that is built
into this major should also give our graduates a certain comparative advantage.
Be that as it may, I am certain that the study of Latin America has helped
foster within you a more humane and informed understanding of the challenges
your generation now faces. Whether these same advantages will help me
as I begin another kind of transition in life remains to be seen. But
Latin American studies has been good to me to date, and it has been a
wonderful experience having the opportunity to teach students like you
over the years, especially here at the University of Washington.
Les deseo mucha suerte.
Charles Bergquist - June 12, 2003