Cuban writer, political theorist and national hero José Martí visited several northeastern colleges and universities in 1885 and wrote in La Nación newspaper that Cornell is a "magnificent [and] modern university" where students -- particularly those from Latin America -- "would obtain all of the rich body of information that they need for modern life."

Debra Castillo, director of Cornell's Latin American Studies Program (LASP), likes to quote Martí to show how he viewed the university and its strengths.

"It rings very much with the image that Cornell [has] for itself today," said Castillo, a professor of comparative literature who also directed the program from 1997-2001.

LASP marks its 50th anniversary at a luncheon celebration Nov. 4, with guest speakers including historian Thomas Holloway, active in LASP from 1974 to 2000 and its director from 1982-87; Gilbert Merkx, Duke University vice provost for international affairs; and Kellogg Foundation program director Valeria Brabata, who will discuss field research opportunities in southeast Mexico.

Nine LASP graduate students will present research on such topics as conceptual art and social change, housing in mid-century Colombia, and nutrition policy in Bolivia. "A lot of the work that they are doing is on the kinds of questions that future scholarship is going to take its cue from," Castillo said.

Holloway said that "LASP's history shows that there is much to be gained from an interdisciplinary understanding of Latin America," not only for its diverse cultures but "the historical, social, political, economic and environmental aspects that may be studied in the isolation of the traditional academic disciplines, but which cannot be adequately understood without making the interconnections among them."

Interest in Latin America continues to inspire engagement from across the university, in agriculture, humanities and social sciences fields and in the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, which has an executive MBA program in Colombia, and in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

"That makes Cornell more interestingly interdisciplinary than other programs because it does have that breadth, and that goes back to the beginning," Castillo said.

Professor of anthropology and sociology Allan Holmberg, who founded the Cornell Vicos Project in 1952 to help bring the indigenous population of Peru into the 20th century, "was very important in us thinking of issues of development in Latin America," she said.

Other scholars and administrators then in the College of Arts and Sciences, the ILR School and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences also recognized "the need to have an interdisciplinary project to put Latin America and Cornell on the map, and thinking together in productive ways about questions related to culture and development, and agriculture and labor and social movements," Castillo said.

Latin America came to the forefront of U.S. policy in the 1960s, also a time when "Latin American literature and cultural production intruded on older ideas of the hierarchies that had put Europe at the top," Holloway said. "Cornell was already well placed to move in these directions, and the existence of LASP was important in the creation of new faculty positions focused on Latin America in history, government, economics, literature, city and regional planning, and other fields."

The LASP steering committee has discussed following up the 50th anniversary event by "asking program members to help us define some of the issues we should be thinking about as we move forward to the next 50 years [and] how they would like to see the program develop and evolve," Castillo said. Issues could include migration and immigration and southern nations emerging as political and economic powers, she added.

LASP also sponsors a film and lecture series, conferences, seminars, outreach programs, social and networking events, and cultural programs for the Ithaca community.