The Program on Latin America and the Caribbean exists to serve faculty and (especially) student interest in this increasingly important part of the globe.

From immigration to rain-forest preservation, from political transition in Cuba to the left-wing resurgence in Venezuela, issues relating to Latin America and the Caribbean are increasingly prominent in policy debates and the U.S. media. And so, too, is interest and knowledge of the region rising among Maxwell faculty and graduate students, says Tom Perreault, associate professor of geography and the new director of Maxwell's Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (PLACA).

"U.S. political and economic relations with Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as immigration from the region into the U.S., make it clear that this is an important part of the world for U.S. students—and foreign students working in the U.S.," says Perreault. Many scholars at Maxwell, elsewhere at SU, and at the nearby SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) work on Latin America and the Caribbean, in areas such as indigenous peoples, environmental issues, social movements, and governance, Perreault notes. The same is true of students; in international relations, for example, roughly 20 percent of current students list Central and/or South America as their primary region of interest. Contributing to high student interest is the fact that more and more Maxwell students hail from the region.

These faculty members and students convene through PLACA, one of five regional programs within the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. Like the other regional programs, PLACA draws freely from the disciplines. Perreault is a geographer whose recent research focuses on development and conservation in the Bolivian Andes; previous director John Burdick, an anthropologist who studies religious movements in Brazil; and former, long-time director Karin Rosemblatt, an historian who focuses particularly on Chile.

Perreault describes PLACA as "not so much a research center as a broader sort of studies center where we help with graduate training. It really is a program focused on graduate students and exists to a large extent because of graduate students."

One such student is Lorena Vinuela Ortego, a Fulbright Fellow who came to Maxwell from Argentina for a dual master's in international relations and public administration. "I chose Maxwell for its Latin American focus, among other things," says Ortego, who is now pursuing PLACA's Certificate of Advanced Study in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has been active in many PLACA activities—leading, with a Bolivian student, the Spanish Table conversation group; helping to coordinate the Cinelatte Latin American film series; and becoming a student representative on the program's steering committee.

To Ortego, perhaps the most valuable aspect of PLACA is the way it connects students to professors. "I think the faculty members involved in PLACA are the most accessible and willing to engage with students," she says. "So PLACA is a good way to communicate. We give them feedback about what we would like to see in classes, and they can also present research. It's a very active group."

In addition to offering a certificate, PLACA sponsors an interdisciplinary graduate seminar; currently, it is taught by Matthew Cleary, an assistant professor of political science specializing in Latin American issues. PLACA organizes a series of brown-bag presentations, where students present their research. And there are working groups organized around students' interests—whether a particular country or a theme such as trade and development.

On the research side, PLACA offers summer grants for master's or doctoral research in Latin America and the Caribbean. "Because Latin American studies are certainly not limited to the social sciences, we will fund students from ESF, and from Spanish language and literature or other departments," says Perreault.

As student interest in Latin America and the Caribbean continues to grow, so do the opportunities for international exchange. The de Sardon-Glass graduate assistantships, administered through the Moynihan Institute and PLACA, bring students to Maxwell each year from Peru, Colombia, and other South American countries. SU Abroad plans to establish a new center—its first in Latin America—in Santiago in association with the University of Chile, and Maxwell's Executive Education Program recently signed an agreement with that same institution to bring students to Syracuse. SU students can even spend spring break on a field stay in Rio de Janeiro, studying Brazilian religion and society with anthropologist John Burdick.

In the coming years, Perreault plans to forge closer ties between PLACA and SU's Latino-Latin American Studies program, directed by literature professor Silvio Torres-Saillant. A longer-term goal is to establish PLACA as a National Resource Center (NRC) for the U.S. Department of Education, as part of a consortium with Cornell and SUNY Binghamton. (Two other regional programs at the Moynihan Institute, focused on Europe and South Asia, are NRCs operating as consortiums with Cornell.) All these initiatives, says Perreault, will extend PLACA's reach while retaining its focus on supporting graduate students.

                                                                                    —Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers