Stone Center for Latin American Studies: Post-Katrina Information

Dear Friends,

The Stone Center is now reconstituted, at least virtually, through the Internet. Edie and I are in Austin, TX, Jimmy in Chesapeake, VA, Valerie in Arlington, TX, Sue in Covington, LA, Lucy in Donaldsonville, LA, Brian in Cuernavaca, MX en route to New Orleans. Ana in Kissimmee, FL, and Debbie in Ithaca, NY. I feel that Sallie Hughes (Department of Communication at the University of Miami), who completed her Ph.D. in Latin American Studies at Tulane in 2001, belongs on that list too; we cannot thank her enough for to the critical role that her blog played and continues to play for our extended community.

Once our Center team was able to reestablish communications, we turned our attention immediately to the relocation of our graduate students and Rockefeller Fellows to other institutions, trying to respond to their many financial and academic needs. We now have accounted for everyone and have posted contact information for all. Six are at UT Austin, two each at Rice, Harvard, & the University of Florida, and one each at Boston, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Louisiana State, and the Universities of Arizona, California at Los Angeles, Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico, & Pennsylvania. We conducted a similar search to locate our Latin Americanist faculty and have now accounted for almost everyone and have posted contact information at http://rtsclasblog.blogspot.com. Jimmy Huck has also created a blog specifically for undergraduates to communicate and reestablish contacts. Undergraduates can reach this special blog from the address http://rtsclasundergrad.blogspot.com/.

In every task, records on our computers were critical. Thankfully, our local server and other computers were safely stored in Jones Hall. They contained not only our undergraduate records, but also essential records that are required for our upcoming submission to the U. S. Department of Education for funding as a National Resource Center for Latin America (a competition now held every four years) and the software and data that supports our website. We plotted a mission to rescue these computers since our arrival at our disparate sites, but it was simply too dangerous to attempt until last Tuesday. With special permission from the university, Jimmy and Sue returned to the campus under escort and brought our vital computer equipment to safe ground. Valerie shipped an external hard drive to Covington, where Sue and Jimmy will copy all essential files and FedEx the drive to Austin, where LANIC and LLILAS have generously offered to mount a temporary server and website if necessary.

Jimmy and Sue found the Stone Center offices in Jones Hall, including our newly renovated conference room, our new visiting faculty offices and workstations for TAs, and our new file room, to be just as we left them. The Norton Student Lounge (“La Cueva”) and our auxiliary file storage room in the basement of Jones Hall were flooded to the ceiling. Our newly redesigned offices for Cuban and Caribbean Studies in Caroline Richardson Hall, which include Debbie’s office, a seminar room, and offices for visiting fellows took on an inch or two of water, and we hope that they can be cleaned and occupied without major delays.

We are now focused on planning course offerings for the spring semester, which will include an almost normal spring semester followed by a compressed nine-week semester. The purpose is to meet various situations that returning undergraduates might confront. These include students who took no classes in the fall, and others who took classes at other universities, but were unable to take some of the required proficiency courses or courses for their major. In most departments, there will be special priority given to lower-division sequenced courses that are prerequisite to more advanced courses. Latin American Studies will offer in the spring semester Latin American Studies 101, 102, and 400, and then 101 and 102 in the compressed semester. We also will be vigilant in insuring that all of our majors are able to meet our requirement to enroll in three Latin American content courses at the 600-level, and that a strong selection of courses be available for our graduate students.

There is no doubt that Tulane University and the Gulf states face major challenges in the immediate future. From every disaster there emerge prospects for leadership, reflection, and productive new direction. Tulane and the Stone Center have opportunities to apply our research and experience to the creation of programs that will examine critically social, economic, political, legal, and ethical issues associated with disaster response and recovery today and throughout history. As Latin Americanists, many of us bring to the Gulf region insightful knowledge of Latin Americans’ own experiences in planning and coping after massive dislocations and suffering caused by natural and human violence. Indeed, we might productively today consider forging paths that will allow us to work in conjunction with on-going real-life efforts in the Gulf region. I sense that many of our faculty, staff, and students are tired of feeling passive, and are waiting for initiatives that let them think more positively and proactively about rebuilding our societies. We welcome all who would join us in this quest to offer their thoughts and their labor as we prepare to return to our primary avocations as educators and problem solvers.

Tom Reese