FRED LEBLANC Lowell Gudmundson, professor of Latin American studies, and two Costa Rican colleagues received a two-year $115,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Collaborative Research Grant. In 1998, Gudmundson read Negros y blancos, todo mezclado ("Blacks and Whites, All Mixed Up"), which was coauthored by Mauricio Melendez. The book inspired Gudmundson to design and pursue the NEH-sponsored research project, titled "Choosing a Color for the Cosmic Race: African Americans and National Identities in Central America,"and to work with MelŽndez.

It's rare that an esoteric academic research project seems to have a maverick (or even seditious) edge to it—in the most positive sense, of course. But that is the case with "Choosing a Color for the Cosmic Race: African Americans and National Identities in Central America," a project for which Lowell Gudmundson, professor of Latin American studies, and two Costa Rican colleagues recently received a two-year $115,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, the first such grant that a Mount Holyoke faculty member has been awarded. Gudmundson will collaborate on the project with Rina Cáceres, professor of history and director of the Central American Post-Graduate Program in History at the Universidad de Costa Rica, and Mauricio Meléndez, a journalist, linguist, and genealogist.

While the research will focus on such academic constructs as "invented tradition" and "ethnicized nationalisms," in pursuit of elucidating the history of African American populations that have been submerged in dominant nationalist accounts throughout Central America, it will by necessity involve digging into the family history of past and contemporary elite political figures and confronting contradictions surrounding issues of mixed race.

"When historical memory meets ethnic history, sparks will fly," says Gudmundson. In Central America, the history of race and identity is fraught with contradictions. Notes Gudmundson, "The celebration of race mixture in the abstract has been joined to a decided reluctance to recognize African ancestry within this same tradition and ideology. Thus, the exploration of family histories, their public imagery, and their contemporary memory, especially at the elite level, will form an important part of this study."

The roots of the project itself are almost as intriguing and convoluted as the origins it will explore. In 1998, Gudmundson read a book called Negros y blancos, todo mezclado ("Blacks and Whites, All Mixed Up") that was coauthored by Mauricio Meléndez and Tatiana Lobo. In great genealogical detail, the book traced the multiethnic origins of Costa Ricans, particularly the elite. Although Gudmundson had been focusing his research of the past twenty years on agrarian social history, in particular on coffee, as a student he had trained with leading historians of African America. His earliest publications (1975–1976), completed in Costa Rica when he was a young research assistant, focused on manumission, race mixture, and the demographic history of African Americans in the region, and he had remained interested in these areas.

Despite the fact that Vicente Aguilar Cubero, born in 1808 and vice president of Costa Rica from 1856 to 1858, had four immediate successive generations of African American slaves and freed(wo)men on his mother’s side of the family, he was portrayed as white in this well-known portrait.

Gudmundson was impressed with the meticulousness of Meléndez's research and recognized many of the documents that he saw cited in the book as materials he had examined himself. From his own research into political and economic forces shaping land use, economic classes, and the distribution of wealth and political power in Latin America, particularly for his book Costa Rica Before Coffee (1986), he was also familiar with many of the individuals and families whose ethnic and familial lines were discussed in Negros y blancos, todo mezclado. One man, in particular, sparked his interest. In the book, Vicente Aguilar Cubero, born in 1808 and vice president of Costa Rica from 1856 to 1858, was demonstrated to have four immediate successive generations of African American slaves and freed(wo)men on his mother's side of the family, something Gudmundson had never known. Yet Gudmundson recalled a portrait of the man that represented him as being white. The book did not use images, and Gudmundson thought to himself that doing so would lend credence to the theory that African heritage was being "whitewashed" by the elite. Clearly, Cubero would have had a darker complexion and no doubt features in line with his and his mother's baptismal entries as mulattos.

Gudmundson was excited about his "discovery," but filed away his thoughts about the book until he heard a talk on the African roots of Nicaraguan and Costa Rican families by Meléndez given at a conference in Costa Rica in 1999. He talked with Meléndez for barely five minutes after the presentation, and again he was impressed and intrigued. Says Gudmundson, "Mauricio Meléndez is renowned for his innovative approaches to bridging the divide between a too-often elitist and exclusionary tradition among genealogists in Latin America and genuinely popular social history. He is also an innovator in gaining access to a nontraditional 'readership' for broad-based public history via the Web publication of his popular Columna Raíces ("Roots Column") with the major Costa Rican daily La Nación. Trained as a journalist, Meléndez has sparked lively public debate within Costa Rican society with his documenting of the slave and freedwomen ancestry of much of that country's contemporary ‘white' elite."

Listening to conference closing remarks, Gudmundson was also struck by Rina Cáceres's play-on-words commentary that he translates as, "the problem with this history is not one of lack of knowledge ["conocomineto"] but rather of recognition ["reconocimiento"]. It is not 'their' history but 'our' history." Walking away from the conference, Gudmundson began thinking about how to collaborate with Cáceres and Meléndez on a project that would explore the complex issues of race mixture and social identity so powerfully obscured by a pattern of denial. In something of an alternative to Columbus Day celebrations in October 1999, he and Meléndez collaborated on a Web publication of their work in this area. This collaboration was indicative not only of remarkably parallel directions and even visual sources, but also of a commitment to nontraditional forms of publication and engagement with often-controversial questions of "public history." In their current project, Cáceres, an historian of Africa trained at the Colegio de México, will add her expertise in developing archival resources from her work focusing on the African-born "slaves of the king" who built the famous Omoa castle in Honduras, part of Spain's defensive fortifications stretching from Saint Augustine in Florida to Venezuela.

The study, according to Gudmundson, will situate Central America's invention of regional and national ethnic identities within the context of "invented tradition" and "ethnicized nationalisms." It will draw heavily on the recent work of scholars in history, literature, and anthropology to reinterpret the process by which Central Americans, and particularly their cultural and political elite, have chosen to represent themselves in one rather than another ethnic category. Says Gudmundson, "The study will contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the increasingly strident, polarized, and simply dichotomous form of ethnic politics in Central America. Increasingly, the categories of Indian or Maya versus ladino or mestizo [both terms denoting Spanish-speaking mixed-race populations] appear as timeless and immutable categories, alongside the denial of African American presence and agency. The evasion of serious discussion of historically discriminatory if subtle practices within the heterogeneous and relatively recently constructed ladino-mestizo majority cultures has contributed, perversely, to precisely this polarized, simplified, and confrontational contemporary debate."

To "deconstruct" history Gudmundson and his colleagues will use parish and other archival records, oral histories, and their personal experience and will explore both iconic figures, such as founding fathers and cultural heroes, and the family albums of common citizens. "What we propose," says Gudmundson, is to "construct a counternarrative to the one whose flattened and homogenized version is so familiar to students, the often-reluctant consumers of these unproblematic Hispanic nationalist traditions."

The three researchers will dedicate a year or more of full-time work to the project during 2001–2003. Gudmundson will work on the project full time during his sabbatical year supported by Mount Holyoke (2001–2002), plus four summer months during 2001–2003. He will spend approximately two months each in Guatemala and Nicaragua and will visit Costa Rica as needed to coordinate activities and publication plans with Cáceres and Meléndez. Databases that are generated will be made available through the Center for Historical Research at the Universidad de Costa Rica and eventually in online or CD-ROM form; Web pages and a book in both Spanish and English editions will also result from the study.

NEH Collaborative Research Grants support original research undertaken by a team of two or more scholars or research coordinated by an individual scholar that, because of its scope or complexity, requires additional staff or resources beyond the individual's salary. Eligible projects include research leading to the preparation of scholarly publications that break new ground or offer fresh perspectives; editions of works or documents that are of value to scholars and general readers and have been previously inaccessible or available only in inadequate editions; annotated translations into English of works that provide insight into other cultures; and conferences addressing a topic of major significance to the humanities.