Latin America and Caribbean Guggenheim Fellowship Awards, 2009

For Immediate Release: June 10, 2009

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded thirty-three Fellowships to artists, scholars, and scientists from Latin America and the Caribbean, according to Edward Hirsch, Foundation president.  The successful Fellows were chosen from over 500 applicants.  This year’s new Fellows are from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The Foundation grants Fellowships through two annual competitions:  one for citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada; the other for citizens and permanent residents of Latin America and the Caribbean.  Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.  In its selection process, the Foundation consults with distinguished scholars and artists regarding the accomplishments of the applicants and the significance of their proposed projects, and presents these evaluations to a Committee of Selection, all of whose members are past Guggenheim Fellows. 

The new Fellows, who range in age from thirty-two to eighty, will be engaged in projects throughout the Western hemisphere.  Filmmaker Sebastián Díaz Morales will be working on “The Way Between Two Points” in Comodoro Rivadavia and other sites in Patagonia; photographer Livia Corona will be documenting the recent surge in and effects of mass public housing in Mexico; and linguist Mariana Achugar will be researching the role of language in learning about the dictatorship in Uruguay. 
       
Twenty-one fields of study are represented in the proposals of this year’s Fellows. For example, sociologist Angela Alonso will be examining the ideas and strategies in the Brazilian movement for the abolition of slavery; physicist Máximo Bañados will be investigating  gravity and the origin of dark energy and matter; anthropologist Verónica Cereceda Bianchi will be continuing her studies on textile designs of indigenous peoples in Bolivia as expressions of identity; biochemist Fernanda G. De Felice will be conducting research on Alzheimer’s disease as a new form of brain-specific diabetes;  Renato de Lima Santos, a doctor of veterinary medicine and molecular biologist, will be focusing on antimicrobial responses to Salmonella; in the field of literary studies, Adriana Rodríguez-Pérsico will be conducting research on how science and technology affected the dissemination of knowledge in Argentinan culture (1925-1950); and historian Oscar Adolfo Zanetti Lecuona will be studying the rise and fall of the Spanish Caribbean sugar industry.

The creative arts will be represented by a number of the new Fellows, including Peruvian poet Rodolfo Hinostroza; installation artist Rolando Peña and composer Paul Desenne, both from Venezuela; Chilean artist Angela Ramírez Sanz; Puerto Rican novelist Mayra Santos-Febres; and Mexican choreographer Omar Carrum Semoloni.   

In a time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the Guggenheim Fellowship program is all the more important.  According to President Hirsch, since its establishment in 1925 the Foundation has granted almost $275 million in Fellowships to over 16,700 individuals. The continued and ever more generous donations from friends, Trustees, former Fellows, and other foundations have ensured that the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation will be able to continue the mission Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim set for it:  to "add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding.”