INTER-AMERICAN NOTES: CONFERENCES

Abstract

Between July 23 and July 25, 2014, the University of Montevideo hosted the Fourth Jornadas Internacionales de Historia del Paraguay, with sponsorship from the Universities of Georgia, Köln, and Rennes 2. Organized by Thomas Whigham and Juan Manuel Casal, the conference included 45 presenters and 70 attendees traveling to the Uruguayan capital from the United States, Germany, Spain, Italy, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Students from both the National and Catholic Universities of Asunción also took part with one of their number, Claudio José Fuentes Armadans (Universidad Católica), providing an interesting presentation on the history of the Liberal Party. First-time contributors to the conference included Carlos Gómez Florentín (SUNY Stony Brook), who discussed the environmental history of the hydroelectric complex at Itaipú, and Justin Michael Heath (University of Texas, Austin), who traced the evolution of frontier security in the early Jesuit missions. The Jornadas also benefited from repeat contributors, including Ignacio Telesca (Universidad Nacional de Formosa/CONICET), who analyzed the historical content of Paraguayan textbooks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Bridget María Chesterton, who discussed how the “sweet herb” ka’a he’e (stevia) has affected markets and habits of consumption in more recent times.