Editor Carol S. Hatfield Designer Pamela P. Fuller Illustrator Gary McElhaney Photographer Marsha Miller Web Stephen Cooper DISCOVERY, published as a service to the people of Texas, samples research and scholarly activities at The University of Texas at Austin and represents the campus as a place of exploration, examination, creativity, discovery, and action. Credit is appreciated if text is reprinted. Editorial inquiries and comments should be sent to the Editor, DISCOVERY, P.O. Box Z, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78713-8926 Phone: (512) 471-5056 Fax: (512) 471-5812 E-mail: chatfield@mail.utexas.edu

Volume 16 - Number 1 CONTENTS     The Latin American Initiative For those of us who live in Texas the border with our neighbors to the south is merely a thin ribbon of river. Eighty years ago farsighted leaders at the University of Texas recognized that teaching and research on Latin America would greatly benefit this state because of its Hispanic heritage. They took the words of Ashbel Smith, first president of the UT Board of Regents, to heart: “It belongs to Texas by right of our geographical position to furnish all this instruction to our neighbors on the other side of the Rio Grande.” Their extraordinary vision is now the premier Latin American studies program in the world. The articles in this DISCOVERY describe the University’s exemplary Latin American Initiative.      Leadership in Latin America    Larry R. Faulkner      We’re Texas—and Latin America               Sheldon Ekland-Olson,  Victoria E. Rodríguez      Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies               Nicolas Shumway      International Business Education    David E. Platt      Latin American & International Law    Bill Powers      Strengthening Democracy in Central America               Reginald E. Todd,  Chandler Stolp      RESOURCE CENTERS FOR LATIN AMERICA Benson Latin American Collection Ransom Center Blanton Museum of Art Center for American History University of Texas Press Latin American Network Information Center      Exchange Programs with Latin America               Lawrence S. Graham      Endowed Chairs in Latin American Studies      A Student’s Perspective    Paula McDermott      The Creation of Maya History   Nikolai K. Grube      Economic Geology and Latin America   Scott W. Tinker      IC2 Institute: Networking Communities               David V. Gibson,  Julie Nordskog CURRENT ISSUE in PDF (138K PDF file) Download Adobe Acrobat® Reader To view PDF (Portable Document Format) files, you must have Acrobat Reader, available free from Adobe for Macintosh, Windows, DOS, and UNIX platforms. Just download the appropriate version following Adobe's online instructions and configure it for your Web browser.