Kingston, R.I – August 11 –Erik Loomis, professor ofhistory and director of theCenter for Humanities, received a Beatrice S. Demers Foreign Language Fellowship through the Rhode Island Foundation to study Spanish for a month in Santiago, Chile. The opportunity supports his research into relationships between social movements in the United States and Chile during the mid-to-late 20th century.
Improving his Spanish is essential as he transitions to new research projects that require Spanish-language archival and fieldwork in Chile. Since his visit earlier this year via the fellowship, his Spanish proficiency has improved meaningfully.
“Full immersion is the best way to do it,” says Loomis. “My Spanish is still very much a work in progress.”
Loomis’s prior scholarly focus has been on the American West, particularly extractive industries (timber, mining, and agriculture), and their social and political consequences. The new project extends this interest internationally, examining how liberal and left-leaning United States-based organizations engaged with Chile before and after the 1973 coup, when a right-wing military takeover, backed by the CIA and Nixon administration, overthrew a democratic socialist government, resulting in a seventeen-year brutal dictatorship.
“Connections between the U.S. far right and the Chilean military dictatorship are already extensively documented,” says Loomis. “My project deliberately focuses on the less-examined side, which is the engagement by progressive and civil society organizations.”
U.S. corporate investment in Chile, especially the copper industry, was a structural driver of the conditions that originally produced the democratic socialist government. U.S.-based environmental organizations supported indigenous peoples resisting land exploitation by timber and mining companies. North American labor unions had complex responses to both the socialist government and the dictatorship that depended upon their own political leanings, which reflected larger issues in U.S. labor politics. Human rights groups advocated for the restoration of democracy, the end of torture, and basic civil liberties in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Beatrice S. Demers Foreign Language Fellows Program was established in 2007 by the Rhode Island Foundation to honor Beatrice S. Demers, who taught foreign languages at the University of Rhode Island for more than 30 years. Beatrice S. Demers was a leader in the field of foreign language education in Rhode Island.