CENTRE for LATIN AMERICAN
RESEARCH and DOCUMENTATION
CENTRE for LATIN AMERICAN
RESEARCH and DOCUMENTATION
CENTRE for LATIN AMERICAN
RESEARCH and DOCUMENTATION
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Prof Dr Michiel Baud
Michiel Baud is Professor in Latin American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He graduated in Contemporary History at the University of Groningen in 1982 and received his Ph.D. cum laude in Social Sciences at Utrecht University in 1991. From 1995 to 2000 he was Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Leiden.
RESEARCH INTEREST
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His Ph.D research was carried out in the Dominican Republic, where he studied the social history of a tobacco producing peasantry in the northern part of the country. In doing so he combined traditional historical documentary research with anthropological fieldwork techniques. After finishing his Ph.D he did research in southern Ecuador and North-Eastern Brazil. His current research interests are indigenista ideologies and their influence on present-day academic interpretations of the Andes, the role of ethnic movements in Latin American politics, the social history of Latin American borders, the analysis of Latin American modernity and the construction of collective memories in present-day Latin America.
Confianza: Governance and Trust in Latin America and the Netherlands
Valedictory lecture given by Michiel Baud, Professor in Latin American Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
23 November 2018.
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Visitors of Latin America will often hear someone saying: Don’t worry, this person is “de confianza”, you can trust him! Or entering a friend’s house, he or she will open the fridge, or pointing to the kitchen, tell you: You can take what you want, “estás de confianza”. Often adding the customary phrase: “Es su casa!” These phrases exclaimed in so many different ways and forms; what do they mean? What do they say about Latin American society, about its social and human relations, about the meanings of trust? In the past decades, I have often pondered these simple questions, and the complexity of their possible answers. Today looks like a good opportunity to go deeper into them. I have always felt that confianza could well be the essence of the many examples of social networks and solidarity in the region. It not only presents a basic ingredient in Latin America’s social relations which so many people like me, who have lived in Latin America, have appreciated so much. It also forms the basis for the vibrant civil society which is surely a crucial characteristic of Latin American reality. My emphasis on solidarity and confianza flies in the face of mainstream images of Latin America’s political and social reality and statistical data that stress distrust and conflict as essential elements of Latin American society.
