Amid demonizing soundbites and uninspiring trilateral agreements, productive discussion about Latin America often seems elusive. Most of the time, news about the region seems to flit in and out of the seven-day news cycle without sticking. But we can find constructive conversations about Latin America — a lot of them — right here at Princeton. Elite U.S. universities have long encouraged Latine political and cultural figures to present their perspectives to the student body, some of whom will likely influence conversations about Latin America in the future.
As the Latin American diaspora grows, we will have to accept that U.S. academia — despite sharing the blame for many of the region’s challenges — will have just as much of a role in shaping its solutions. Indeed, Princeton is currently one of the few places in the United States where Latin American ideas can be productively discussed and where students can come to learn what they need to work productively on them in the future.
Princeton, and other Ivy League universities, have had a large impact on Latin American history. Examining these interactions is so crucial to regional development that there’s even a class about Latin America’s development that discusses these mutual histories at Princeton — in fact, there are many classes on Latin American thinkers and writers.
Clicking through enough Wikipedia links — the Monroe Doctrine, Big Sticks, Good Neighbors, Operation Condor, the Organization of American States, the Alliance for Progress, the Pink Tide, NAFTA, Henry Kissinger and Che Guevara — you quickly find that many of these diplomatic initiatives (and, occasionally, conflicts) feature Ivy League decision makers on both sides. The NAFTA trade agreement, for example, was ratified by Mexican President Carlos Salinas, a Harvard Ph.D., and American President George H.W. Bush, a Yale graduate.
Look, also, to the Cuban Revolution: At the time, two Princeton alumni were serving in top U.S. foreign policy jobs — the CIA director was Allen W. Dulles, and the Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles. Both were extremely opposed to the revolution.
Not only have Ivy League graduates involved themselves in Latin American policy — Ivy League schools have invested in it. Princeton’s programming is generally responsive to events in Latin America, allowing up-to-date discussion to be held regarding recent events. This responsiveness to the times is critical in shaping the decision-makers in the region in the future.
This engagement with Latin American political discourse dates back decades. In April 1959, Whig-Clio hosted Fidel Castro on campus a mere three months after the Cuban Revolution. The invitation letter reveals a humanizing curiosity to “understand the real meaning of the Cuban Revolution,” and the event itself gave Princeton students the opportunity to ask questions to a political leader that would radically change Latin America’s relationship with the United States.
This was an important forum for discussion on change in Latin America, informing its students’ future worldviews. For one, the author of the invitation, Whig Clio President Paul Taylor ’60, would go on to be a diplomat, working throughout Latin America in Ecuador, Brazil, and Guatemala, before serving as the ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
Princeton’s commitment to building interregional relations with Latin America also extends beyond politics to cultural understanding and exchange. In fact, one third of all Nobel Prize winners in Literature from Latin America have spent time at Princeton. Gabriel Garcia Marquez worked at Princeton’s Atelier program in 1998. Likewise, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded his Nobel prize while he was a visiting lecturer at Old Nassau. In 2023, Vargas Llosa and professor Ruben Gallo released the book “Conversation at Princeton,” which explores how politics and literature guided Vargas Llosa’s works with an explicit focus on the input of Princeton students “whose reflections and questions [gave] voice to the responses of millions of Vargas Llosa’s readers.”
Despite the University’s commitment to cultural understanding, it is hard to ignore the harm perpetuated by some Princeton alumni in Latin America. It may require a considerable amount of idealism — maybe even naivety — to believe that the University, which educated the Dulles Brothers who supported a military dictatorship in Guatemala and later the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, simultaneously possesses the tools to reconcile the United States’ relationship with Latin America.
Yet Princeton is driven by its students — and attitudes have changed. Hopefully, our generation will engage in partnership that can both satisfy the American concern for the global order and the Latin American need for development.
Achieving this goal will require more investment in conversations at universities, including Princeton. Today, migration and economic alliances are topics of discussion at multi-ethnic family dinner tables and the Oval Office alike. Princeton students interested in repairing these relations have access to an academic environment adamantly focused on cultural exploration that attracts Latin American thinkers through decades of institutional legitimacy, and they should continue to tap into those resources.
This change in narrative, from Princeton as a place that encouraged Latin American dependence to one that can help students promote collaboration, must come from the students themselves — and this is possible. We have had recent, productive conversations: Just two years ago, the Princeton Pre-Read was the travelog of Jordan Salama ’19 about his senior thesis research along Colombia’s Magdalena River. Princeton also retains some of the world’s leading experts on Latin America: Former Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Carlos Pinzon is a visiting professor at SPIA and the director of the Program in Latino Studies is the Angela Davis Prize-winning social theorist Lorgia Garcia Peña. This semester, SPIA hosted the president of Paraguay, and the program holds an annual conference with Latin American heads of state.
This dynamic is one that the University must preserve: students being given access to world-class information and the sanctity of sitting around and talking about it. And it’s a dynamic that Princeton students now should engage in, much as past Princeton students did. As the stakes are only precept participation points and not the legacy of entire populations, the classroom prepares students for thinking about real power. With two hundred years of diplomatic history to learn from and a popular will for stabilizing relationships, this training may even do some good.
Juan Fajardo is a first-year from Miami, Fla. He would be thrilled to chat further at jf0214[at]princeton.edu.
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