The Society for Latin American Anthropology :: SLAA Human Rights Latin America Essays

The Society for Latin the Statesn Anthropology Changes in the SLAAs definition of Latin America have gone gift in hand with changes in the intellectual, social and political goals of the Society. As wherefore president Michael Kearney wrote in an open letter to the membership published in the Societys April 1997 column in the Anthropology Newsletter (Until recently the societys membership) was centered in trades union America while its objects of study were primarily to the South of the United States. The overabundant pattern in the production and consumption of knowledge by join American anthropologists was one in which we used to go down to Latin America to study the Latin Americans, and then publish more or less of our break in English...In recent years, in dialogue with the membership, the Board has sought to delimitate Latin America as an object of anthropological inquiry from a region defined in geopolitical terms to a sociocultural definition based on the de facto pre sence of Latinos. The term Latin America has been expanded to include the Anglophone, and Francophone Caribbean and Diasporic Latino communities. This push towards a more comprehensive anthropology evident in their definition of Latin America is reflected in the Societys stream goals and programs. Creating a truly international community of scholars of Latin America is the most important goal of the Society. Current president Joanne Rappaport in a assertion published on the SLAA webpage writes, reaffirming Michael Kearneys vision, that the mission of the Society is to create a blank space for dialogue across boundaries, particularly national and ethnic ones, in an causal agency to view Latin America, not as a geopolitical mankind upon which we as North Americans have an impact, but as a place from which to speak, write, and to theorize. The most important step in this mission to pass on a dialogue between the different national Latin American anthropological traditions tha t constitute the field has been the creation of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology (JLAA). The Journal started in 1995 under the editorship of Wendy Weiss seeks to publish articles on anthropological seek in Mexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean and the Latin Diaspora. So far, issues have been given up to the state of current Latin American anthropology, the concept of Mestizaje, and the Zapatista movement for autochthonal autonomy in Mexico. Articles have been published in both Spanish and English.