Latin America Encounters Nelson Rockefeller: Imagining the Gringo Patrón in 1969
Nelson Rockefeller addresses a meeting of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, February 28, 1975. (Ricardo Thomas, White House Photographer)
ROOM CHANGE: Monday's seminar will now take place in the 4th Floor Conference room
Washington History Seminar
Historical Perspectives on International and National Affairs
"Latin America Encounters Nelson Rockefeller:
Imagining the Gringo Patrón in 1969"
Ernesto Capello
MACALESTER COLLEGE
In 1969, Nelson Rockefeller embarked on four ill-fated diplomatic tours of Latin America that inspired violent clashes between the state and the street. Contemporary observers and subsequent scholars have dismissed Gov. Rockefeller's goodwill effort as an unmitigated failure. In this talk, Ernesto Capello explores recently released documents, including selections from the thousands of solicitations sent to Rockefeller by ordinary citizens, which demonstrate the need to reevaluate Rockefeller's Presidential Mission as a critical moment in the way Cold War Latin America imagined its neighbors to the north.
Ernesto Capello received his doctorate in Latin American history from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and is Associate Professor of History at Macalester College. He is the author of City at the Center of the World: Space, History, and Modernity in Quito as well as numerous articles regarding transnational frameworks of citizenship. Currently an NEH fellow at the Library of Congress, he is developing two book projects, one concerning the idea of the equator in French and Ecuadorian geographical science, and one concerning hemispheric identities that crystallized during Nelson Rockefeller’s 1969 Presidential Mission to Latin America.
Report from the Field: Jason Steinhauer, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress
Monday September 30, 2013
4:00 p.m.
Woodrow Wilson Center, 4th Floor Conference Room
Ronald Reagan Building, Federal Triangle Metro Stop
Reservations requested because of limited seating:
mbarber@historians.org or 512-769-2858
Photo ID required for admittance to the building.
October 7: John McNeill (Georgetown), on mosquitoes and independence struggles, 1776-1825
Co-sponsored by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center, the seminar meets weekly during the academic year. See www.nationalhistorycenter.org for the schedule, speakers, topics, and dates as well as webcasts and podcasts. The seminar is grateful for the support of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
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History and Public Policy Program
A global leader in making key archival records accessible and fostering informed analysis, discussion, and debate on foreign policy, past and present. Read more
Latin America Program
The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action. Read more