Enrique Desmond Arias

Statement

The Latin American Studies Association has played a central role in my career and in my professional growth. As an interdisciplinary scholar, the association has been an important venue for developing ideas, having conversations, and building the connections that have supported and developed my scholarship and that of my students and collaborators. These connections have been particularly important to me as a scholar who has engaged in community-level research across numerous countries in the region including Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Venezuela, Peru, and Mexico. At a time of very real regional challenges to democracy and civil governance, LASA, with its history of addressing threats to democracy and scholarly freedom, will play a critical role in ensuring open and thoughtful discussion of issues facing the region and the world. I am interested in joining the executive council to support LASA’s efforts to maintain our dialogues and to build knowledge in this difficult time.

I attended my first LASA in Guadalajara in 1997 as a graduate student and have been an active member of the association since then. I served as co-chair of the Brazil section for two terms. I have twice served as a track chair, first for the 2016 conference and later for the 2020 conference. In the last two years, I have participated on the Guillermo O’Donnell Award and the Bryce Wood Book Award committees.

In 2024 I was honored to serve as program co-chair of the LASA Congress in Bogotá with then-president Jo-Marie Burt and Makena Ulfe. Central to our vision for that meeting was promoting open and collaborative discussion, working with local scholars, and offering spaces in our plenary panels for dialogue between scholars, activists, artists, and social leaders. The presence of the congress in Bogotá, a highly accessible city in the region, promoted attendance by many, including students and activists based in Latin America. These efforts were aided by a robust collaboration with the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana which was the site of the conference, and which aided our engagement with the wider community of scholars and practitioners in Colombia contributing to deep and vibrant conversations about varied issues including the struggles for peace and justice in that country. As a member of the executive council, I would seek to continue efforts to make the association and its meetings accessible to members, particularly residents of Latin America and the Caribbean, students, and those with limited travel budgets. 

LASA emerged during a time of autocratic government throughout much of the region to provide a space for scholars to come together to dialogue, build relationships, and advance knowledge. Today’s difficult political environment in the United States and elsewhere requires us to consider how best to advance the interests of the association and its members. In a context characterized by democratic retrocession in some countries, the experiences of the Bogotá conference are important for helping to build the association and our community of scholars.

Today, LASA has an important role to play in promoting academic debate and supporting scholars. In this context it is essential to provide open spaces for scholarly dialogue and research at a time when universities are facing budget cuts and where some governments are imposing burdensome requirements and uncertainties on visitors.

Our annual conference should remain as accessible as possible to the largest number of participants. This means holding conferences in open, democratic countries. It involves continuing to rotate meetings among different locales to ensure opportunities to participate among the varied communities of scholars, students, as well as activists and practitioners, engaged with the association. The association can make use of hybrid meeting technologies to enable the involvement of a broader array of participants. We can also invest in new initiatives like the recently approved LASA Regional Congress initiative, which supports additional conferences, hosted in different parts of the Americas, to provide a broader array of scholars, students, and others, with access to the dialogues and networking opportunities promoted by the association.

As in Bogotá we should work with local universities in organizing our meetings. These collaborations provide the conference leadership and participants with additional support locally and they also strengthen the academy in locales where we meet.

Lastly, we should continue to build on our experiences of promoting dialogue between scholars and practitioners which have the effect of not just enriching our meetings but also connecting the association more closely with broader social and political currents in and on Latin America. Such actions strengthen both our community of scholars and the groups of practitioners and activists that we collectively dialogue with.

Taken together, these efforts can advance the interest of LASA and our academic communities around the hemisphere and the world in these challenging times helping the association to contribute to building a brighter and more democratic future.