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From: mcastro@umiami.ir.miami.edu
To: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK <psn@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Report on meeting of Latin American sociologists
The disaster that "neo-liberal" economic programs have wrought upon the
vast majority of the region's people was a central theme when sociologists
from all over Latin America met in Mexico City last week.
The event was the XX Congress of the Asociacion Latinoamericana de
Sociologia (ALAS) held Oct. 1-6 in the Mexican capital. Among the
keynoters was Immanuel Wallerstein, who lectured in a heavily accented
but fluent and comprehensible Spanish. Wallerstein predicted, among other
things, that immigrant workers would become the "dangerous class" for
capitalists in the core countries of the world-system in the 21st
century. An overflowing crowd of several hundred people listened to
Wallerstein in a stifling hot auditorium just across the street from the
Aztec Templo Mayor.
Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and Rodolfo Stavenhagen were among the many Latin
American social scientists who gave keynote addresses. One who was not
was Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president of the association and
now president of Brazil. His economic policies were sharply criticized
by several of the presenters.
Organizers of the event said 2,000 people registered for the event,
including many students. There were relatively few U.S. participants.
One reason may be that the event came on the heels of the LASA meetings
in Washington, DC.
Now that the who, what, where, and when have been taken care of, I will
share some brief observations about the meeting.
This was the first time I have attended a meeting of ALAS. The most
striking thing was the extent to which the mainstream of Latin American
sociology still is what in the U.S. would be regarded as the critical or
progressive wing of the discipline. I had the feeling that Latin
American sociology was re-emerging from its own crisis, and there were
many allusions to the fact that this event was more spirited than those
in recent years. Several speakers spoke of the event as "the Congress of
hope."
On my way back to the hotel on the very first day of the conference, I
noticed a crowd gathered at the Zocalo, the main square in the city.
Flames leapt out from somewhere in the middle of the square, which right
across from the national palace, the Cathedral and my hotel, which was
once known as "El Gran Hotel de la Ciudad" and now is better known as
Howard Johnson. It turns out that some of those marching in a protest
marking the 27th anniversary of the Oct 2, 1968 Tlatelolco massacre,
where 500 people were killed by government forces, had commandeered
several buses and set fire to them in the most visible place possible.
The police did not show up to make arrests until the buses were
destroyed, and it was clear that they were under orders to avoid
bloodshed, which they did. Some things have changed in Mexico, and many
others have not.
The most encouraging thing about the experience for me is that I sensed a
real interest, among many people that were obviously not professional
sociologists, in what the social scientists had to say about the big
structural questions. For the Mexicans especially, these questions do not
seem abstract at all as they watch the value of their currency sink and
their standard of living erode.
Although I am loath to engage in what may appear as self-promotion, my
paper for the conference was on the immigration debate in the United
States and the issue of whether we are entering a new nativist era. The
paper is in Spanish, although there is a shorter draft version in
English. I would share either version with anyone interested, and
invite comments as I hope to develop it into a book project.
Max J. Castro
North-South Center
University of Miami
Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhu.edu