The “Best First” Book Prize Committee for the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies has voted unanimously to award this year’s prize, which considered first monographs published between 2019 and 2021, to S. Elizabeth Penry’s The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Drawing on an impressive array of documentation from a long list of archives on both sides of the Atlantic, The People Are King advances a convincing and timely revisionary examination of the processes by which Andean peoples within the viceroyalty of Peru strategically submitted to, collaborated with, and resisted Spanish imperial institutions from the sixteenth-century conquests through the age of revolutions and independence into the modern day. Via an exploration of the long-term development of five Andean highland towns and the ways in which their local populaces forged the social institution of the común to identify and assert their common interests and attain greater agency, Penry brilliantly demonstrates how indigenous peoples appropriated, refashioned, and repurposed Christian and Spanish ideas of natural rights and sovereignty, blending them with pre-conquest Andean principles of community obligation, in order to navigate the legal landscape and manipulate power structures within the Spanish-ruled administrative framework. Her expertly crafted book exhibits a rare level of erudition and historical craftsmanship for a first monograph and promises to serve as both an essential reference work for those working in the field and an aspirational exemplar for all historians.
Congratulations, Dr. Penry!
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Dr. Elizabeth Penry, Associate Professor of History and Latin American and Latinx Studies, has won the Conference on Latin American History’s Howard F. Cline Memorial Prize for her book, The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019). Penry received her award during the American Historical Association’s 135th annual meeting held in New Orleans in January 2022.
The Cline Prize, established in 1976 is awarded every other year “to the book or article in English, German, or a Romance language judged to make the most significant contribution” to the history of indigenous people in Latin America. Affiliated with the American Historical Association, the Conference on Latin American History “is devoted to encourage the diffusion of knowledge about Latin America through fostering the study and improving the teaching of Latin American history.”
The People Are King re-examines two key moments in history: the massive resettlement of indigenous people in the wake of the Spanish invasion, and the revolutionary movements of the late 18th century. As one reviewer wrote, The People Are King demonstrates how indigenous Andean communities became “grassroots laboratories” for participatory democracy and popular sovereignty, and in doing so “helped establish the foundations of the modern world.”
The People Are King has previously won four other prizes: the 2020 best book on Bolivia Prize, given by the Bolivian Section of the Latin American Studies Association; the 2019 Flora Tristán Prize for the best book published in any subject that offers a “significant contribution to Peruvian academic knowledge,” given by the Peruvian Section of the Latin American Studies Association; 2019 Murdo J. MacLeod Book Prize for the best book on Latin American History from the Latin American and Caribbean Section of the Southern Historical Association (Honorable Mention); and the 2019 Susan M. Socolow-Lyman L. Johnson Chile-Rio de la Plata Prize, awarded biennially for the best book on Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay given by the Conference on Latin American History.
Dr. Penry receiving her award. Photo by Dr. Stephanie Huezo
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Prof. S. Elizabeth Penry’sThe People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics received the Susan Socolow-Lyman Johnson Prize. The People Are King has also been awarded the Flora Tristán Prize.
The People Are King
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The Latin American Philosophy of Education Society (LAPES) is hosting their final two events for their online symposium, Learning Across Liberation Theologies, to explore the links between liberation theology, pedagogy, and activism. We gather front-line educators, movement organizers, and practitioners and scholars of Liberation Theology to address these themes. This week the themes are “Caribbean/Latin American Liberation Theologies.” and “Black Radical Tradition”
Prof. Stephanie Huezo will be giving a presentation entitled “Pedagogy, Community, and Survival in the Salvadoran Revolution” on Friday, October 23, 2020, from 6-8pm ET. The presentation will be in English with Spanish interpretation.
Friday, Oct. 23: Caribbean/Latin American Liberation Theologies (with Spanish interpretation)
Speakers:
● Sylvia Marcos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Universidad Iberamericana – Keynote
The Gastón Institute has awarded Professor Stephanie Huezo the Andrés Torres Prize. As a result, Prof. Huezo will give present a paper called, “Reading and Driving under Popular Education: Tracing Salvadoran-Inspired Activism in Maryland,” on Thursday, October 8th, 1-3pm EST. Her paper will be part of UMass Boston’s celebrations for Hispanic Heritage Month.
Prof. Huezo is one of our newest additions to our department and we are very excited to have her join us! She is a Professor of Central and Latin American History. Here is a brief conversation with her.
Stephanie Huezo
What courses do you hope to teach at Fordham?
Aside from UHC: Latin America, I am excited to offer courses on Power and Resistance in Latin America, Central American History (both the region and the diaspora), and on popular education.
2. What do you on your off-time/leisure?
In my free time I enjoy playing board games with my friends and family. I watch quite a bit of T.V. as well. Recently, I’ve been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, reruns of Sister Sister, the Golden Girls, and Netflix shows like 3%. I also aspire to one day be a good baker but for now, I bake pre-made goods and watch baking shows on TV.
3. Why are you excited about coming to Fordham?
I went to catholic schools in the Bronx so I grew up hearing about Fordham but I decided not to apply. However, I have always been intrigued by the University’s mission. I am excited to work at a place that values the student and worker as a whole. More importantly, as a first-generation college student and SalviYorker, I look forward to teach, and learn from, the young scholars at Fordham University.
4. Please briefly tell us about your research?
My research focuses on Salvadoran community organizing during the twentieth and twenty-first century in both El Salvador and the United States. I pay particular attention to how Salvadoran communities have used popular education to challenge the politics of legality and belonging.
5. What thing would no one know about you that you would like to share?
One thing that many new people don’t know about me is that I used to play club rugby at Wesleyan University and in Chile during study abroad. I had many positions but my favorite ones were as a Number 8 and hooker. https://www.ruck.co.uk/rugby-positions-roles-beginners/
You can follow Prof. Stephanie Huezo @steph_huezo.
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On Saturday, August 3, 2019, in El Paso, Texas, a 21 year old white male brandishing a semi-automatic rifle walked into a Walmart known to be popular with Americans and a convenient destination for Mexicans crossing the nearby border for their weekly shopping excursion into the United States. He began to shoot, deliberately targeting people of apparent Mexican and Latin American descent. Twenty three people died in the shooting (the last dying in April of 2020), and another twenty three were injured. News organizations identified the dead as thirteen United States Americans, eight Mexicans, and one German citizen. A deeper look, though, reveals that of the thirteen Americans killed, eleven were of Latinx descent. As a result, the El Paso Walmart shooting was the worst mass murder of Latino people in modern American history.
The murderer has been identified as a white supremacist with a deep hatred of Latinos, someone who consumed white supremacist literature and wrote a manifesto at the time of the shooting. This is not a surprise, as in the last five years the United States also has suffered mass shootings of African Americans (Charleston, June 17, 2015) and Jews (October 27, 2018). In his manifesto, the shooter argued that Mexicans specifically, and Latinxs generally, are invading the United States, taking jobs away from U.S. citizens, and endangering the white majority populace. This rhetoric reveals anti-Latinx sentiments with roots deep in United States history. It also calls attention to the historical and continuous race-based and structural violence that affects minority communities in the U.S. and at the border.
Father McShane has suggested that the Fordham community commemorate and discuss these tragedies in November. For now, though, it is important to mourn the victims of August 3 and to remember how and why they died:
Andre Anchondo, 23
Jordan Anchondo, 24
Arturo Benavides, 60
Leonard Cipeda Campos, 41
Angelina Englisbee, 86
Maria Flores, 77
Raul Flores, 77
Guillermo Garcia, 36
Jorge Calvillo García, 61
Maribel Hernandez, 56
Adolfo Cerros Hernandez, 68
Alexander Gerhard Hoffman, 66
David Alvah Johnson, 63
Luis Alfonso Juarez, 90
Ivan Hilierto Manzano, 46
Gloria Irma Marquez
Elsa Mendoza Márquez, 57
Margie Reckard, 63
Sara Esther Regalado, 66
Javier Rodriguez, 15
María Eugenia Legarreta Rothe, 58
Teresa Sánchez de Freitas, 82
Juan Velázquez, 77
Father McShane asked the University Church to offer the Sunday (August 2) Mass on behalf of the victims and the El Paso community, an appropriate gesture for a community and a people very serious about their religious faith.
For our part, we mourn the dead and summon the living to reflect on what we can do to support our own communities. The El Paso Museum of History will display a digital memorial in remembrance of August 3. The public can join virtually by submitting pictures and memories on Digital El Paso at http://www.digie.org. We invite you to take part and encourage everyone to become active in supporting some of those organizations working on behalf of our communities in El Paso, the Southwest, and in New York. We can best honor the dead by fighting for and supporting justice at home and around the nation:
We are excited to announce that the Peru Section of the Latin American Studies Association has awarded Prof. S. Elizabeth Penry’s new book, The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019), the 2020 Flora Tristán Prize for the best book on Peru published in the previous year.
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We are absolutely delighted to announce that Fordham Historian Yuko Miki has received 3 honors across 3 different fields at the 2020 American Historical Association (AHA) for her book, Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil. She received the AHA’s Wesley-Logan Prize for African Diaspora History and the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH)’s Warren Dean Memorial Prize in Brazilian History. Moreover, she received an Honorable Mention from CLAH for the Howard F. Cline Prize in Latin American Ethnohistory.Frontiers of Citizenshipwas also a 2019 Outstanding First Book Award Finalist, Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). We are so thrilled by her successes. Please congratulate Yuko Miki when you see her.
Part of Fordham’s rigorous PhD program is its mandatory Teaching Tutorial. This class uses one-on-one training with a member of Fordham History’s professoriate to give PhD candidates valuable pedagogical training and classroom experience. The tutorial transitions PhDs from their first two years of coursework into their upcoming teaching assignments mandated by the PhD program’s funding package. We caught up with Michael Sanders, a PhD candidate who is finishing his second year at Fordham and recently completed his tutorial with Dr. Héctor Linda-Fuentes, to get his perspective on the experience.
