Latin American Geography || Latin American Geography

American Geographical Society

Latin American GeographyAuthor(s): Paul F. StarrsSource: Geographical Review, Vol. 86, No. 3, Latin American Geography (Jul., 1996), pp. iii-viPublished by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/215496 .

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LATIN AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY

geographers who are students of Latin America tend to be creatures foremost of the field. The proximity and allure of the Americas south of the U.S. border, at least as much as any innate exoticism, have brought geographers time and again across the United States-Mexico borderlands and put them to work in those nations where Spanish or Portuguese is the language of the moment but where, not far away in time or space, lies a variety of indigenous taxonomy and knowledge sufficient to challenge the most talented observer and chronicler.

Perhaps in Latin American Studies, more than any other academic realm, geographers have made effective common cause with a cadre of like-minded scholars from other disciplines. For its followers, Latin American Studies is entirely another disciplinary affiliation, with its own journals, listservs, expeditions, and meetings, its own archival gems and field-research projects. Latin Americanists draw frequently and deeply on formidable local resources: the workers, the field practitio- ners, and the archive-adept scholars who inhabit all the rest of the Americas.

Yet woe betide the Latin Americanist geographer who limits correspondence or cooperation solely to local university people in Mexico City, San Salvador, Bogota, Caracas, Asunci6n, or Sao Paulo (and, latterly, Brasilia). Also beckoning are the key informants who promise so much additional insight, with recognition widespread that in the hustings are hugely informed locals whose voices must be heard-either in person or by following words and deeds through an archival palimpsest. Since the i8oos, Latin American geography has been an Eden for the field-inclined. Many of us grew up there; some of us, though, came later in life, as James Parsons describes Carl Sauer's having done-traveling first to Mexico only as he was about to turn forty. Having been there, the instinct to return soon and often to Latin America is not eas- ily repressed.

The essays in this issue echo a parallel interest in Latin America as an accessible, significant, invigorating place and, not least important, as the home of a superb body of indigenous knowledge and colonial legacies. Much of the knowledge is, even today, personal or folkloric, and making the best possible use of field investigation has been a forte of geographers ranging from Alexander von Humboldt and the indefatigable German geographer Karl Sapper to some of the late luminaries who appear in this volume-Carl Sauer, Homer Aschmann, Jim Parsons, Dan Stanis- lawski-and, of course, to the ever-growing number of students and scholars of the Americas. It is no accident that many of the authors in these pages trace direct line-

age or intellectual forebears to the University of California, Berkeley, but others hail from powerhouses of Latin American geography in Austin, Baton Rouge, Gaines- ville, Syracuse, Madison, Tucson, and Tempe.

Connections between the Geographical Review, Latin American geography, and

geographers are so established that no one could doubt their durability and depth.

The Geographical Review 86 (3): iii-vi, July 1996 Copyright ? 1996 by the American Geographical Society of New York




This number of the journal gleans from a large reservoir of available manuscripts; many of these are texts that originated in a plenary session a few years ago at the As- sociation of Pacific Coast Geographers meeting in Berkeley. If there is any single bias to the collection, it is an overall emphasis on aspects of historical geography-but the notes and reviews remedy much of that. A historical emphasis ought not to be a problem for most readers, who recognize the significance of the past in present-day research problems. Expeditions by geographers to explore and explain Latin Amer- ica provide a strong and enduring thread through the discipline's past. And certainly there will be a great deal of contemporary research on the Americas in Geographical Reviews to come.

Assorted approaches are represented here. First, there has always been a strong literary emphasis in regional approaches to Latin America, especially in the sizable body of work that John Kirtland Wright embraced in his estimable writings on the geographical imagination. Accompanying that are studies of the importance and significance of imagery as it shapes self-identity, nationalism, and political geography. The articles by Stephen Frenkel, Marie Price, and Daniel Arreola emphasize how places develop, especially in the eyes of local residents and in the contrasting and ratiocinative views of outsiders.

Midpoint this collection of essays are four pieces on aspects of work under the greater or lesser influence of Carl Sauer. If this can in part be considered a bow in the direction of geography west of the Sierra, let us remember a university that has produced an unusually strong three generations (however assessed) of Latin American- ists, dating back to Sauer, who remade himself at Berkeley from an expert on the landscapes of the midwestern United States into a more than competent surveyor of the southern reaches of the Americas. Henry Bruman, James Parsons, William De- nevan, and George Lovell and Christopher Lutz each take up a distinctly different as- pect of what Sauer called "culture history" while crafting essays that assess larger geographical problems, if sauced with a distinctly Berkeleyan flavor. In Parsons's piece, especially, it is quickly evident that Sauer's view of the potential of Latin American Studies, and geography's role within it, was six decades ahead of its time.

If the fact of proximity and the accumulated interest of repeated visits points to Latin America as an enticing magnet for geographers resident elsewhere, that flavor of experience and frequent reinoculation comes through also in the more secular pieces by Dan Stanislawski and Edward Whitesell, each of whom looks at essentially comparative materials. The issue also includes Record Notes and Field Notes that elaborate on problems in Latin American geography. Brian Godfrey, John Browder, and Wendy Wolford make clear the range and scope of Lusogeography. From Larry Ford comes a model of Latin American city development, a revision of his 1980 origi- nal, a frequently reprinted and much-discussed work in both classroom and research settings. Ford's model is especially important in fast-changing Mexico, but it stands here in particularly delectable contrast to urban morphology in Sonora, as examined in Eric Perramond's Field Note: a territory of some formidable towns, to be sure, but also with vast stretches of rural ranches, which are his main topic. Finally, a series of

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five maps is backbone of Robert Kent and Maura Huntz's work on the prevalence and internal migration of Spanish-language newspapers in the United States.

The Record Notes, Field Notes, and Geographical Reviews deserve an extra measure of attention because it is in field-derived researches and in a rich collection of mono-

graphs, especially, that Latin American geography has come to life. An emphasis on the seen and observed, as much as on the archival, is the norm for many of us. Checking some of the sources for Parsons's piece led me back to the dozen thick folders of letters I

photocopied some years ago from the Sauer Papers in Berkeley's Bancroft Library. I found two extracts especially poignant and significant, and because Jim Par-

sons did not catch them, let me remedy the omission. Sauer certainly had impulsive moments of judgment that could produce a sharp reproof. He tended to disdain

programmatic statements, which really meant that he was uninterested in such statements by anyone else. But he stood firm in his view of what a geographer could and ought to be, a view formed very much by long reflection on his own work patterns in Latin America, and even more so by his travels with students and, later, col-

leagues. In a 28 September 1954 letter to Fred Kniffen-not long before Sauer retired from full-time teaching-he assessed patterns in American geography:

What has hurt us most badly has been the notion that in some manner the geographer "synthesizes" the observations others have made, that what he uses is already in books and tables and that he is working adequately if he digests data which he gets only at second hand. Thus we have the sad situation of geographers who work in their offices through the years when their legs, heart, and eyes are good. To me the complete geographer is an eager and qualified field observer, who can have his eyes communicate with his brain so that relevant questions arise as to categories of phe- nomena (sorry, but I can't think of the simple words). This is, I think, the reason why European geographers are better than we. Frank Darling, once a geneticist, how great in ecology including [that of] man, takes off his shoes and socks when he needs the final feel of the spot where he is at work. This Antaeus quality of being in intimate touch with the ground is needed. In large measure it is something that isn't taught but discovered. I've seen it happen over and over to young men who went into the field with me, the recognition that some feature of land, vegetation, or culture had a pattern, or that the pattern disappeared and was replaced by something else, then the question as to what had happened, the speculations that grew into al- ternate hypotheses, the trail that now became increasingly clear and exciting to fol- low.... They may cross over to us from the natural sciences if they have the natural history rather than the experimental bent, or they may turn up from any back- ground that you'd hardly figure to invite such a direction.... Seeing this infection of field study take hold is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. Largely the good ones train themselves, which is as it should be, after they have had a sufficient underpinning of organized subject matter. Incidentally, these hot field workers also are likely to have a sharp nose for finding their way into the relevant literature, as additional line of discovery. This is the breed I think we need most.

I cannot say for certain that the Geographical Review or any one essay within its

pages has inspired someone to head into the field, to see and talk and compare as

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Sauer insists should be done. But if there is any single main goal here, let me just offer it as this: The Geographical Review, whether in thematic issues or in its more regular fare, aims to make geography both palatable and ever-more relevant to a large and

intelligent readership. Through the years its authors have done especially well at em-

phasizing their support for broad-based investigation of the conditions and facts of the world around them. That has produced some peaks and some valleys, as it has for the discipline as a whole. But more than a few geographers have made observation and analysis the better parts of their life, and here they will find a home. It is this

range and diversity that Carl Sauer was supporting in a long letter to the Guggen- heim Foundation's Henry Allen Moe, written on 22 October 1940 "On the Plateau of New Mexico." As much plea as statement, it is a suitable expression of at least one geographer's view of what can profitably be done in cooperation not just with other

geographers but also with the manifold people who inhabit the earth:

I am now looking only at the connotation of life as lived in the context of Latin America. I'm being a geographer; I'm not starting out from any general premises, as good social scientists would do, to see how they fit a particular Latin American situation. I want to start with the particulars of Latin America, particulars that are localized and dated, and see what we can get in the way of cultural patterns and vi- talities. ... I think there are many gods and that their authority is restricted to the lands of their nativity. This is important: Jehovah and his prophets (e.g. our theo- retically inclined social sciences) deny the reality of a pluralistic world, and we Occi- dentals have done and are doing our best to reduce our world to one system. I'm

against all that.... Now, as to cultural autonomism, Latin America is probably in a class by itself, as

witness the manner of break-up of the Spanish Empire and the growth of provincial movements in Brazil, Argentine, and elsewhere at the present time. There may be something persistently Iberic in this bent, and something of physical geography, and somewhat of a revulsion from a colonial system that deliberately tried to im- pose uniformity. At any rate our southern neighbors are convinced provincials in large part, and beyond that they may split into Indianismo or creole or mestizist- nationalist groups and movements. This particularism of the Latin American is lit- tle noted by us, unless it takes on an anti-U.S. form.... It is one of the most important things for us to observe, tolerate, and enjoy. Here, thank God, is a big part of the world that shows less tendency to march under one ideology or to lose its local flavors by learning the same patter and motions. Their era of standardization was that of the union of crown and church.

All of which means I want to see the cultural diversities (and connections) of Latin America explored, expressed, and stimulated, by an institute. jVivan las pro- vincias! How can they be aided to express and develop their cultural qualities or comparative advantages?

-PAUL F. STARRS

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