More than 700 panels, workshops, and meetings were organized, with up to 50 events going on at any one time in the course of this three-day gathering. Major areas of discussion included, "Agrarian and Rural Life," "Arts and the Media," "Culture and Power," "Labor Studies and Class Relations," "Social Justice and Social Movements," and more.

The deepening economic and social crisis across Latin America provided the backdrop of the conference. The region's workers and peasants are feeling the brunt of capitalism's world economic crisis particularly hard, and are responding to its effects. In recent weeks, for example, toilers in Argentina have been organizing protests to reject attempts by the government of Fernando de la Rúa to slash wages and other social conquests. Similarly, on the eve of LASA's congress, 12,500 auto workers in Puebla, Mexico, scored an important victory against Volkswagen. Through an 18-day strike, they wrested a 10.2 percent wage increase, and other benefits, such as school supplies for their children.

Aspects of these and other developments were addressed in the discussions and 1,600 papers presented at the conference. There were, for instance, panels on "Plan Colombia," where, under the guise of the "war on drugs," Washington is increasing its military intervention in South America; the crisis in Ecuador; the land ownership structure in Central America; moves by a number of governments to adopt the U.S. dollar as their country's currency; and more. Although the majority of presentations were in English, many panels, reflecting the composition of the conference, were held entirely in Spanish or in Portuguese.

Highlighting the place of the Cuban Revolution in the hemisphere's politics, more than 80 scholars and academicians from Cuba participated in the event. Panels dealing specifically with politics and culture in Cuba included: "Cuba: The Special Period Generation and the Theme of Exile," "Poetic and Philosophical Discourse in the Writings of José Lezama Lima and Alejo Carpentier," "Cuba's Foreign Relations," and "Cuba: The Challenges of Development in the Epoch of Globalization," among others.

A panel entitled "Social Proposals by Today's Cuban Cultural Magazines," featured Norberto Codina, editor of La Gaceta de Cuba; Jorge Domínguez, a Harvard University professor and one of the initiators of the U.S.-based magazine Cuban Studies; Rafael Hernández, editor of Havana-based Temas; and Víctor Rodríguez, a former editor of University of Havana's El Caimán Barbudo.

At one of the main events held in the course of the congress, Mexico's minister of foreign affairs, Jorge Castañeda, spoke to some 200 conference participants on "Mexico and the Americas: A New Approach to Hemispheric Affairs."Castañeda raised the point of view that the United Nations Security Council plays "a key role in peacekeeping processes and policies around the world." The Mexican government, Castañeda added, will seek to play a prominent role in shaping what he described as a fledgling "new international system" where imperialist powers, "unable to be dominant despite their might, end up identifying their own interests in rules [established by] consensus" among various nations.

On the opening day of the conference the New York Times ran an article claiming LASA was "under fire for sponsoring a Communist Party official from Havana instrumental in a recent purge of Cuban intellectuals." It charged that Darío Machado had led "an intellectual offensive in the 1990's against scholars who strayed from a strictly orthodox [Cuban Communist Party] line and forged ties" with foreign academics, and others. Machado is director of the Center for Studies on the Americas, an institute for research on politics and economics in the hemisphere. The article went on to report that Juan Antonio Blanco, a former academic who left Cuba and is now director of the Ottawa-based Human Rights Internet, questioned LASA's sponsorship of Machado's visit.

Although not part of the official conference program, a meeting was held to launch the book Intelectuales vs Revolución: El Caso del Centro de Estudios Sobre America (Intellectuals versus Revolution: The Center for Studies on the Americas Affair). The book is part of imperialism's anti-Cuba campaign, claiming the Cuban leadership organized a purge of intellectuals in the country. However, neither the Times article nor the book launching, which attracted less than a dozen participants, had any perceivable repercussion on the discussions at the congress.

Machado himself participated in a panel entitled "Cultural Politics and Political Culture After the Cuban Revolution," without any incident.

The next LASA conference will be held in the spring of 2003 in Dallas, Texas.  
 
 
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