Fall 2004

ANT 310L • Anthropology of Latin America

Course Description

Upon receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the great Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez thanked the committee, and went on to bemoan the “solitude” of Latin America in relation to the powerful North. “The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own,” he proclaimed, “serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.” From this course students will acquire a overview of Latin America through an anthropological lens: from the great indigenous civilizations, through colonialism and dependent development, to the poverty of progress as the 21st century begins. Paying special attention to classic anthropological themes—race and cultural difference, power and inequality, utopian visions that emerge from the society’s margins—we will explore anthropology’s response to García Márquez’s challenge.

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