Mario Rodríguez (1922-2005)

Abstract

Mario Rodríguez was a young man in a hurry. Born in Colusa, California, the son of parents who had emigrated from Spain, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, in 1940 with a major in Spanish and a minor in history. In December 1942, part way through his baccalaureate, the U.S. Army called for his services. The following September he married Mildred Shepherd, who together with their daughter Jacqueline survives him. Mario arrived in France in late 1944; he participated in the Battle of the Bulge, where he was wounded and hospitalized for several months. He was still in the hospital in May 1945 when Jackie was born. Throughout his service years, he took correspondence courses, and he attended school in Grenoble while recuperating. After returning to Berkeley, he obtained his A.B. in 1946 and M.A. in 1948. He completed his Ph.D. in history in 1952.His dissertation, written under the supervision of Engel Sluiter, studied the Portuguese outpost of Colonia do Sacramento — a focus of Luso-Spanish rivalry in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. But after obtaining his first position, an instructorship at Tulane University, in 1952, Mario decided to specialize in the history of nineteenth-century Central America. In 1954 he moved from New Orleans to New Haven, where he became the first Latin Americanist in Yale’s history department. He remained there until 1960, when he moved to the University of Arizona, where he spent another six years. This was followed by a stint of equal duration at George Washington University. His next move, to the University of Southern California in 1972, would be his last; he retired from that institution in 1992.Mario helped found several programs in Latin American studies, taught a wide variety of courses, and lectured extensively, especially in Washington, DC. He was also a productive scholar. His unpublished dissertation was the font of two outstanding articles, one of which earned the James Alexander Robertson Prize in 1955. His work on Central America included a deftly written, impressively researched biography, Frederick Chatfield: Palmerstonian Diplomat in Central America (Univ. of Arizona Press, 1964), a brief synthesis, Central America (Prentice Hall, 1965), and The Cádiz Experiment in Central America, 1808 to 1826 (Univ. of California Press, 1978), as well as a series of shorter monographs.Frederick Chatfield and The Cádiz Experiment made significant contributions to Central American history for the first half of the nineteenth century. By documenting British Foreign Office operations in Central America in the second quarter of the century, Chatfield helped to clarify some very murky diplomatic history. The Cádiz Experiment fitted Mario’s specific Central American expertise into the larger backdrop of the age of democratic revolutions. It contributed not only clarity to the Central American struggle to achieve an independent constitutional regime, but a rare political account of the Cortes of Cádiz, largely from original documents.Mario’s 1964 Guggenheim Fellowship enabled him to conduct research in Central America. For the academic year 1975 – 76, he received a Fulbright research grant for a study entitled “The Impact of the American Revolution on the Spanish and Portuguese-Speaking World.” This allowed him to complete his work on Central America and to develop a third research focus, the Americas during the revolutionary era, 1760s to 1820s. This latest area of investigation resulted in two additional books, one a collection of documents published in Madrid (1976), and his last book, “William Burke” and Francisco de Miranda: The Word and Deed in Spanish America’s Emancipation (Univ. Press of America, 1994). Beyond his research, he served as contributing editor for the Handbook on Latin American Studies, 1959 – 76.Mario was preceded in death by his twin sister. Their brother, Angelo, a well-known New York actor, passed on five days after he did. Proud not only of his own achievements but also of those of his family and students, Mario was, like his mentor, an exacting scholar, an exceptionally generous friend, and an amiable colleague who will be missed by all who knew him.