I have the privilege of being on a fascinating panel entitled: "Truth, Authorship and Credibility in Travellers' Narratives" at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Friday, April 15, 2011 in Seattle at 10am.

I've called my paper:
Journeys of Empire: the Robertson brothers' Letters on Paraguay


If you just happen to be in town, please do stop by. Here's the abstract:

This paper traces the two voyages of the Robertson brothers: their early 19th century foray into Paraguay and the journey of their Letters on Paraguay, published two decades later. It does more than just render an eyewitness account by the first British visitors to the republic; it allows us to explore how knowledge of the periphery is received at the center of empire. I demonstrate how Letters, and the evocatively named third volume, Francia's Reign of Terror, shaped how Paraguay was perceived in the English-speaking world.

John arrived in 1806 as revolution engulfed the Iberian colonies and was later joined by William, making, losing, and regaining their fortune through trade. The Letters recounting these experiences read as more than ethnography—they describe the wealth of Paraguay and the rise of its first ruler, Gaspar de Francia. The Letters framed Paraguay as a tropical dictatorship in need of liberation and as a fabled land of plenty awaiting investment, leading to justifications for the (British-funded) War of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870) and the ensuing sell-off of Paraguayan property. This paper is based on a close reading of the Letters, English-language newspapers and trade journals, and other contemporary secondary literature against a backdrop of archival and ethnographic work in Paraguay. The Letters and their reception speak to questions of how depictions of tyranny, imaginaries of exotic riches, and geographical knowledge intersect.

For more on John and William Parish Robertson, check out their books on google books: here and here and here.

Please join us as seven authors from the Library's Research Study Rooms
present in the South Court Auditorium a wide-ranging series of
free public lunch-time (1:15 pm) lectures on

History

Stakes of a Triple Frontier City: the Untold History of Ciudad del Este

Friday, January 21, 2011

Ciudad del Este is the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of. Paraguay’s second largest city is the subject of action movies, spy dramas, and airport mystery novels. In the heart of Latin America, the story goes, sits a triad of border cities where shoppers weave between rickety stands to enter gleaming shopping galleries owned by Taiwanese or Arab merchants. A panoply of organized crime supposedly takes advantage of low tariffs and even lower customs enforcement to smuggle billions in contraband to neighboring Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil or Puerto Iguazu, Argentina (and then beyond). Rather than this spectacular and yet shallow depiction of the city, come hear a different account of Ciudad del Este. Instead, we will look at the founding of the city in 1957 and its trajectory over the next three decades to see how a city planned to be the emblem of a modern Paraguay has developed into what it is today, the hopes and disillusionments of globalization.

Christine Folch is completing a dissertation in the Anthropology Department of the CUNY Graduate Center on the national and international politics of hydroelectricity, based on years of fieldwork in Paraguay.