South of the South: Political Dissidence, Exile, and Latin American Transnationalism Around the “New Geography” Meetings in the Southern Cone (1960s–1970s)

Abstract

Based on new archival documents and on original interviews, this article extends recent works exploring radical and critical geographies from linguistic areas other than the Anglo-American ones. It addresses the extraordinary story of the two international meetings for the “New Geography” that took place in Salto, Uruguay, in 1973 and in Neuquén, Argentina, in 1974, still ill-known due to the military dictatorships in the Southern Cone, which forced many of their protagonists to exile or to professional reconversion. Analyzing surviving documents and reconstructing the trajectories of these gatherings’ protagonists allows the development of an original point for today’s critical and radical geographies. That is, the frameworks of national academies are insufficient to develop critical approaches that need first to be constructed through practices rather than mere theories, addressing societal problems in connection with activism. This business can be only accomplished though voluntarist, transnational and cosmopolitan scholars’ engagement.

根据最新档案和原始采访, 本文探讨了英美世界以外对激进和批判地理学的探索, 扩展了近来的研究工作。本文讲述了1973年在乌拉圭萨尔托和1974年在阿根廷诺伊奎恩举行的两次“新地理”国际会议。由于南锥地区的军事独裁统治, 会议的许多主要人物被迫流亡或重新选择职业, 因此这两个会议至今仍鲜为人知。分析留存文件、重建会议主要人物的轨迹, 可以追溯当代批判和激进地理学的本源。由于批判地理学需要实践而不仅是理论、需要解决与激进主义有关的社会问题, 所以国家学术框架不足以构建批判方法。只有通过志愿者、跨国和国际化学者的参与, 这个任务才能得以实现。

Con base en nuevos documentos de archivo y entrevistas originales, este artículo extiende los trabajos recientes exploratorios de geografías radicales y críticas en áreas lingüísticas distintas de las angloamericanas. Se enfoca la extraordinaria historia de dos encuentros internacionales sobre la “nueva geografía” que se llevaron a cabo en Salto, Uruguay, en 1973, y en Neuquén, en Argentina, en 1974, eventos todavía poco conocidos debido a las dictaduras militares del Cono Sur, que obligaron a muchos de sus protagonistas a exiliarse o a reconvertir profesión. Al analizar los documentos que sobrevivieron, y reconstruyendo las trayectorias de los protagonistas de estas reuniones, se puede situar un punto original sobre el desarrollo de las actuales geografías críticas y radicales. O sea que los marcos de las academias nacionales son insuficientes para que se desarrollen los enfoques críticos que primero de todo necesitan construirse más a través de prácticas que con meras teorías, abordando los problemas sociales en conexión con el activismo. Este cometido solo puede lograrse con el compromiso voluntario de académicos cosmopolitas transnacionales.

Key Words:

• critical geography
• internationalism
• Latin American integration
• new geography
• transnationalism

关键词:

• 批判地理学
• 国际主义
• 拉美一体化
• 新地理
• 跨国主义。

Palabras clave:

• geografía crítica
• integración latinoamericana
• internacionalismo
• nueva geografía
• transnacionalismo

Acknowledgments

I would like to especially thank Perla Zusman, Veronica Ibarra, and César Cutinella for running an EGAL panel with me, during which I first had the idea of writing this article. On different occasions, all three of them were very generous in sharing with me information, contacts, and materials about critical geographies and geographers of their respective countries. Very special thanks go to all the witnesses who agreed to be interviewed or to share with me some of their documents or recollections: Germán Wettstein, Carlos Reboratti, Vicente Di Cione, Graciela Rita, Miguel Ligüera, Mirian Pérez, Elbio Garrone, and Danilo Antón. Many thanks for the useful conversations on these themes to Gonzalo Bietti, Fernando Pesce, Breno Viotto, Fábio Contel, Héctor Mendoza Vargas, Sam Halvorsen, Archie Davies, and Jörn Seeman. Finally, great thanks go to the anonymous referees of the Annals for the important insights that they provided to improve my article, and to the editor Kendra Strauss.

Notes

1 All quotes from texts and recordings originally in Spanish, French, and Portuguese have been translated by the author.

2 The women who signed formal plenary speeches recorded in the surviving conference documents (where they are much more numerous than male names) were Rosa Colantuono, Norma Montiel de Allende, Luisa Arroyo González, Norma Sinigoj de Echeberria, Gladys Ramidán, Alicia Capelli, Ana María Petagna, María del Carmen Vaquero, Julieta Guevara, Ana María Goicoechea, Angela Beatriz Bisogni, Diana Sigal, Mabel Ciminari, Beatriz Saint-Lary, Angela Pollina, Elba Kloster, Elsa Ottonello, Marta Rodríguez Prenna, Zlata Jelka de Dosen, Vilma Vercesi, and Cecilia Oker de Azcoitia. Other documents and witnesses also account for the active presence of Graciela Taddey, Claudia Natenzon, Elena Chiozza, María Isabel Andrade, Graciela Pezzuti, and Cristina Klimza Sabalain, in addition to the interviewees.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Federico Ferretti

FEDERICO FERRETTI is Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Bologna, Bologna 40126, Italy. E-mail: [email protected]. His research and teaching interests lie in philosophy and history of geography and in cultural and historical geography, as well as in the international circulation of geographical knowledge through critical and anarchist approaches, with a special focus on Latin America and the Global South.