Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley

Visiting Scholars Fall 2009 - Spring 2010

Each year CLAS sponsors an outstanding group of visiting scholars. The group ranges from area specialists to public intellectuals and practitioners. Visiting scholars give public talks and participate fully in the intellectual life at CLAS.

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Mexico

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, one of the founders of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) who served as mayor of Mexico City from 1997-99, will be teaching a course sponsored by Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies in spring 2010. A civil engineer by training, Mr. Cárdenas held a number of technical posts before turning to politics in 1976, when he was elected Senator for the state of Michoacán as a member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). In 1980, he ran successfully for governor of his home state and, in 1987, spearheaded the demand for internal party democratization which eventually led to the formation of the PRD. In addition to his duties as founding director of the Fundacion para la Democracia, he is active on the topics of energy and political reform.

Mr. Cárdenas will be teaching a semester-long course in Spring 2010, "The Promise & Legacy of the Mexican Revolution: 1910 - 2010."

Daniel Alarcón

Daniel Alarcón is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning magazine published in his native Lima, Peru, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley. He is the author of two works of fiction, War by Candlelight (2006 PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist) and Lost City Radio, a novel published in more than a dozen countries. He has won numerous prizes, including a Whiting Award (2004), Guggenheim and Lannan Fellowships (2007) and a National Magazine Award (2008).

Other Scholars:

Inés Pérez, October 2009 to January 2010
Diego Escolar, November 2009 to February 2010

Senior Scholars

Maria Echaveste

Maria Echaveste is a Lecturer in Residence at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and the co-founder of the Nueva Vista Group, a consulting firm that works with nonprofit organizations, associations and corporations on such issues as immigration, health care, telecommunications, labor and finances. From 1998 to 2001, Echaveste served as assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. She also specialized in international issues related to Latin America. From 1997 to 1998, Echaveste was director of the Office of Public Liaison at the White House and the administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division from 1993 to 1997.

Kent Eaton

Kent Eaton is an associate professor in the Politics Department at UC Santa Cruz. The author of Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies: Argentina and the Philippines in the 1990s and Politics Beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America, his articles have appeared in several comparative politics journals. Previously, he taught at Princeton University and at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Currently, Professor Eaton’s research examines the growing salience of territorial conflict in Latin America from three different perspectives. First, in the wake of economic liberalization and decentralization, he is studying the conflicts that have developed between subnational governments and transnational corporations over the terms and benefits of direct foreign investment. Second, he is examining the sources of increased tension between subnational governments, focusing in particular on the rise of conservative autonomy movements. Third, he is studying the consequences of decentralization in conflict-prone settings, investigating the conditions under which decentralizing reforms either ameliorate or worsen armed conflict.

Kent Eaton

Affiliated Researchers

Postdoctoral Fellow
Elizabeth Havice

Visiting Student Researchers
Moises Viera De Andrade Lino E Silva
Tamara Silva Comargo
Zil Miranda