In less than a year, Brazil will be hosting their second major sporting event within a span of two years; the first being the FIFA World Cup in 2014, the second the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. While the former certainly did not come and go without its own political and social issues, the latter is stirring controversy of its own.
This research represents and reflects upon the current concerns of the Makushi and Wapishana peoples of the Rupununi savannahs, who identified both past and future development of the road cutting through their traditional lands as the most important change happening in the Rupununi. Indeed, the increasing impacts of the road on both the peoples and the places of the Rupununi help demonstrate the ongoing injustice of colonialism within the region.
The Global Financial Crisis prompted academic and policy debates on the need to include political factors in the analysis of economic phenomena, such as trade exchange and financial flows among sovereign states. However, how can one account for the impact of government action on a country’s foreign economic relations?
A couple weeks ago I talked about the new trade and foreign direct investment deals occurring between Latin American countries and China. This subject dates back to the 2000s with the boom of China’s economy, but history between the two countries dates back to the colonial period when goods from both regions were highly prized and exploited.
The Rupununi is a vast savannah lowland region of Guyana, one which forms the Northern fringe of the Amazon basin. Its geography is distinct from the rest of the country, with the tropical forests that cover much of Guyana giving way to the seasonally flooded grasslands, crossed with small meandering creeks. The Rupununi was originally part of the Gran Sabana (Venezuela) and the Rio Branco savannah (Brazil), a geography artificially divided along political line
Dr. Lara Putnam is a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. Much of her research centers on migration, race, and gender in Latin America. I sat down with Professor Putnam to discuss her career, her research, and her views on immigration policy.
