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The United States has asserted primacy in Latin America since 1823 when President James Monroe explicitly delineated the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ sphere of interest in what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. However, for the next 200 years the United States frequently ignored this important region in our policy despite its importance to our trade and security. One of the key aspects of U.S. engagement in Latin America has been and continues to be democracy, but economic interests have been crucial as well and often were said to dominate U.S. policy. This year’s conference will bring together an historic perspective as well as three former senior diplomats with deep experience in Latin America to explore the overarching issues Involved in balancing political and economic issues with democracy promotion in this region. The introductory lecture will lay out the historic foundation of America’s commitment to democracy and the Monroe Doctrine and some modern implications of that history. The closing keynote address will examine what policies toward Latin America are in the US interest and why.
Timothy Walker (B.A., Hiram College, 1986; M.A., Ph.D., Boston University, 2001) is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he serves on the Executive Board of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture, and as graduate faculty for the doctoral program in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies and Theory. He is an Affiliated Researcher of the Centro de História d'Aquém e d'Além-Mar (CHAM); Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. Walker was a visiting professor at the Universidade Aberta in Lisbon (1994-2003) and at Brown University (2010). He is the recipient of a Fulbright dissertation fellowship to Portugal (1996-1997), a doctoral research fellowship from the Portuguese Camões Institute (1995-1996), and a NEH-funded American Institute for Indian Studies Professional Development Grant for post-doctoral work in Goa, India (2000-2002). Walker has also been named a fellow of the Portuguese Orient Foundation (Fundação Oriente), the Luso-American Development Foundation (2003 & 2008), and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2010-2011). In 2018 Walker was appointed a Guest Investigator of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, drawing historic climate data from archived whaling logbooks, Portuguese colonial, and other maritime documentation.
