Events

USF

October 21, 2009, 4:00 PM, Grace Allen Room, USF Library
Archaeology, National Identity, and the Coup in Honduras: The Role of the Ancient Maya

Guest Speaker: Dr. Darío A. Euraque, Gerente, Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History; Professor of History, Trinity College. Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean.

On June 28th, the duly elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, was ousted in a coup denounced around the world. The new regime has not been recognized by virtually any country in the international community. New ministers have been imposed, and virtually all high-level government officials have been removed, including Minister of Culture, Dr. Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle. A little known story in the midst of the broader political crisis concerns the illegal ouster of Honduras’s Director of its Institute of Anthropology and History, the state agency charged with protecting, restoring, researching and promoting the country’s cultural heritage, including its ancient archaeological past. This aspect of Honduras’s national identity is often associated with the tourism drawn to the country’s world famous ancient Mayan city in Copan, near the Honduras-Guatemala border. This talk addresses the eerie question: what role did the Ancient Maya play in the aftermath of the coup in Honduras?

Dr. Euraque is currently at work on a book about the coup of June 28th, 2009 and cultural policy in Honduras. It is tentatively entitled: Lempira Executed once More: Culture, National Identity, Tourism and the Ancient Maya in Modern Honduras. For more information, contact Christian Wells, cwells@cas.usf.edu

Region

November 4-7, 2009
Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Mobile, AL

Nation

December 2-6, 2009
American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA

www.aaanet.org/meetings/index.cfm

World

March 24-27, 2010
Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, Mérida, México

sfaa.net/sfaa2010.html

June 2-6, 2010
Bloom: Cross Pollination and Cultivation of Food Systems, Cultures and Methods, Bloomington, IN

The Twelfth Annual Joint Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS) with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN), hosted by Indiana University. For further information, please contact Richard Wilk, Indiana University wilkr@indiana.edu