You are invited to attend the lecture by Enrique Amayo-Zevallos, From the Amazon Region and the South American Pacific.

Date: Thursday, March 17, 2011
Time: 3-5 pm
Place: Deutz Room, Institute of the Americas Complex, UCSD

This is a long range research project that is the core of the “Núcleo de Pesquisas sobre o Pacifico e a Amazônia – NPPA” (Research Group on the Pacific and Amazon) of the University of the State of São Paulo – UNESP, Brazil. Its main goal is to study the histories, societies, economies, relations and environment of the Amazon and South-American Pacific as regions and the links between them. Amazon is a South-American Region shared by eight countries. From ancient times, communities living in the Amazon played a major role in making this geographical region into a historical and social space; the latest global trends show the need for building direct links from the Amazon Basin (departing from Brazil) into the Pacific Rim (reaching Peruvian coastland). That is because South America also shares the Pacific Rim and since pre-Columbian times their peoples have played a major role in transforming the Pacific Rim from a mere geographical region into a historic, social and economic area. This process went on through the Colonial period and up to the first decades of the Independence in the 1850s. The research project starts in the past and encompasses the present for the growing relevance of the so called Economy of the Pacific in shaping the world’s future.

Enrique Amayo-Zevallos is originally from Perú and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Since 1986 he has worked in Brazil as a professor of Latin American Economic History and International Studies at the Department of Economics & Graduate Program of Sociology at the University of the State of Sao Paulo – UNESP and also at the Inter - University Graduate Program of International Relations “San Tiago Dantas” (UNESP – UNICAMP – PUC/SP). Currently he is doing research at CILAS as a short term Visiting Scholar and has also been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, Universidad Central de Venezuela and other Latin American universities. He has organized some symposia, published several papers and edited one book related to his research project. He is the founder and coordinator of NPPA.