Into the COLAverse – Episode 14: Adela Pineda

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Into the Colaverse, a podcast that takes us on the unique journeys of faculty in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Join me your host, Frederick Luis Aldama as we learn of the many ways that our faculty and their cutting edge work is transforming the world today.

Frederick: It is my great honor to be here with Adela Pineda, who’s an award-winning scholar, and the Lozano Long endowed professor in Latin American literary and cultural studies, and the director of Lelas at the University of Texas Austin, welcome Adela.

[00:00:43] Adela: Hello, how are you?

[00:00:45] Frederick: I am so, so excited and so well, and just really happy to be here, Adela. Let’s jump right in and talk about this. I just, I know it’s gonna be a little sliver of the big. Big story, but how you ended up, uh, where you are and kind of the origin story. Was there something, I don’t know, was there something in the water you were drinking as a kid that kind of somehow led you to become an academic, but also someone who’s curating and doing all this incredible work building, you know, cultural study spaces?

[00:01:23] Frederick: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your journey.

[00:01:26] Adela: Frederick, thank you. Um, well, I come from a regular, I would say middle class Mexican family, but my parents came from two very different backgrounds. My mother was or came from the central area of Mexico, and my father, From the very south part of the country, from a very small city called the de de is famous for, you know, but also the floor, which river in the, in the twenties and, Right.

[00:02:06] Adela: But my, my father came from a very, my grandmother, first language was tab and she didn’t. Any opportunity to go to school and she, she was a single mother and had to, but she was very bright. I knew that the only way her two kids could do something in life was leaving the, and sending them the big city, city study.

[00:02:35] Adela: And so she believed in education. So my father, from that very poor background became AIE and then stayed in the central part of Mexico. My mother came from a different family. She was. Middle class, but she was 11 years older than my father. And no, no woman in, in her family’s side had gone to the university, but she was the first one and.

[00:03:06] Adela: She did at all odds because during those years there were not too many chemists and my mother just, you know, got a degree and thought that she was never going to get married because people told her that she was ugly. You know, those very times. And so I guess, Like they thought that the only way for a person to do something in life, and that was like in the mid sixties when I was born, um, was through formal education.

[00:03:38] Adela: They did careful to give me that they also believe that bringing cultures together, my father being, you know, for example, the origin. Speaking and Spanish, they knew that languages were also important, but they also pushed me to learn languages from an yearly age. And that’s, that’s what they did. And I guess, um, I was brought up thinking that cultural knowledge was important, but also remembering that there were many sorts of cultures.

[00:04:14] Adela: I learned a lot from my grandma from the went pick. Um, I learned from her stories and from her life. So, um, I guess I had many internet, um, you know, from mathematics coach. I had to choose a degree. So when I studied my bachelor’s, I did like a liberal arts type of, and I knew that they were two. I liked, one was children language.

[00:04:42] Adela: The other was my passion for visual arts came later. When I was already writing, um, my second book, but I can tell you a little bit about that. So that’s kinda priority

[00:04:56] Frederick: and Adela, how this is like extraordinary. And how did you get. You know, it’s not often that we get the idea of, um, you know, it’s very difficult sometimes to think about our lives in a different country.

[00:05:12] Frederick: So how did you, you know, decide that a master’s and then PhD at the University of Texas, Austin was going to be the path for you? Well,

[00:05:23] Adela: um, you know, things, I think opportunities come sometimes to you and you just them. When I was an undergraduate student at the university in Mexico, he had a professor who was an America.

[00:05:35] Adela: He wrote a book that was called Greeno in Mexico. He was an English teacher and I learned a lot from, and he told me, You know, when you finish your bachelor’s, you should apply for a ED five fellow. I didn’t even know what they, I fellowship, I didn’t know anything about UT Austin, but he just pushed me and then he said, I think you look well if you study Latin America studies that you had had a long time friend with some colleagues that were Latin American, ut.

[00:06:07] Adela: So, you know, I appli. Not really knowing what I was doing, to be honest with you. And I just came and that’s when I, um, understood Latin America from the perspective for different country. And I understood my culture better as well. And I two countries. Um, so that’s, that’s the way it was. It was through a mentor that I landed in

[00:06:34] Frederick: Texas.

[00:06:36] Frederick: And some of your early work has been on very important authors like Es and of course John, John Steinbeck. But as you just mentioned, kind of bringing a more global perspective, um, kind of both sides of the border to these different. Uh, writers, creatives, philosophers. Um, can you tell us maybe a little bit about your discoveries there and your particular angle on these figures, but, and then we’ll move into this sort of beautiful pathway that you’ve been carving with visual technologies and print journalism and cinema.

[00:07:17] Adela: Sure. Um, I think, like I always have a very wide idea of, For anthropological or sociological, not only literally, um, as was my formation, but my, my undergrad. Was about popular music was about a composer called, because, you know, I, I, I thought that, um, his music was very interesting in the twenties and how it became like a modern type at the time when this was modernized.

[00:07:59] Adela: Um, what I realized even then was that, Culture has many sources that like, it’s always a song of, it’s a context zone. We are always imagine in different, in different, um, you know, worldviews perspectives and the way we make sense of the way we think is the result of those. Contact and when I started reading these authors, you know, these canonical authors who sometimes very, in a way, you know, like for or Stein, I did it through their, and I realizing the archives that, that they were actually not.

[00:08:43] Adela: There resting only because of what they were, but of the people. Um, and this was from, you know, people working from like, you know, doing basic research to, to, you know, um, people who, politicians, ambassadors, fighters. So I thought that, What made these people interesting was that they were able to bring in their writing.

[00:09:16] Adela: Even if it does, it was hidden the worldview of a time and the worldview of a time is not that of an of a country. It is that country in relations, others or community relations to.

[00:09:35] Frederick: Idela in your latest book, The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage. What, and you, this is, you know, your visual research, the technologies of storytelling, both during the, um, the Mexican revolution, but also after. What are some of our, the big kind of takeaways, especially for those of you us, who might not be focused in that particular area.

[00:10:04] Frederick: History and research. What, what can we learn from this important work of yours from the period of 1940 to 1970, maybe about today, about, um, creatives kind of working, um, in and around these spaces, especially kind of American, us American, but also world. Yeah. What are some, what are some takeaways that we might have?

[00:10:29] Adela: Sure. Um, you know, the Mexican Revolution is a site of nationalism. Um, there has been so much written about the Mexican Revolution in terms of nation state. The is huge. It’s very difficult to actually encompass all the reading that the study of this reports. But what I found. Was that there is a side of the revolution.

[00:11:00] Adela: There has been not so much study and it is it’s technological side, it’s popular side. The revolution, um, break or began when cinema as a technology began as well. Even before World War I, the Mexican Revolution was the first revolution to be mechanically. Through film and I noticed that the revolution there was the battles and you know, bunch ofs, all, all those battles.

[00:11:35] Adela: But there were also the battle of image since the very of the revolution, how you could win heart by we imaginary. And I thought that this aspect of the Mexican revolution was fascinat, how a very specific, that had very concrete reasons cause could trigger the imagination of so many other people. Why is it that it became a site to think?

[00:12:15] Adela: Through what revolution means in the wider sense, not only for Mexico. What does it mean, uh, to start a social movement? What does it mean for Intes to use the technology of, um, to reflect on emancipation on so many other questions that traverse twentie, the, the period I studied from 19 to, Is it period of the kind, like when the revolution became nationalized, became sta, you know, became the, the, yeah, the, the symbol of a state.

[00:12:56] Adela: It did keep triggering a very interesting reflection. That’s what I did book. You know, I went to the Cold War I

[00:13:10] Adela: this, the revolution. Let us think about fascism, about socialism. How can, It was an idea of, you know, how people could pick of postcolonial liberation movements tell, So that was, that I found fascinating by studying the filmmakers who also navigated between intellectual thought and popular culture.

[00:13:40] Frederick: Are you seeing something analogous today?

[00:13:44] Frederick: Um, you know, either, you know, with the way Mexico, um, is, you know, constructing its visual imaginary in relation to the North Americas or just globally.

[00:14:01] Adela: Yeah, I, I would say that, um, there are several ways to think that question. One is that certain technologies that in the way, um, We produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas or imaginary.

[00:14:19] Adela: The era of film and revolution was the one I was studying in. Our

[00:14:29] Adela: has really democratized the way we convey ideas and imaginaries. So also the figure of the letter inter is not so prominent. In, you know, conveying social change cetera. We have now several communi that have access to these new technologies to express their world. And I, what is so fascinating of our, of course there, there are other challenge.

[00:15:06] Adela: Imposed by technology themselves because we live in more flexible time or definite like, you know, like to say that you can type power or that you can have a definite change. Social change is very difficult. Um, and I think something that we. Study or talk to. But this is what I can say, you know, that like in Mexico, um, you have many social movements.

[00:15:36] Adela: You have now many others from the role of the role of indigenous communities, their own right. Um, the way we can, um, use, um, you know, technologies like you. Um, before something makers would say, like, I have an idea in my head and a camera in my hand. That was Russia motto, but now this is every day. You know, we, we do that every day.

[00:16:08] Adela: I think this is for the researcher, our times, those new c.

[00:16:15] Frederick: Really exciting. Um, Adela, I know that you are also doing research right now. Is, is that, um, an area that you’re looking into?

[00:16:26] Adela: Yeah. Um, well, I am doing. Two type of research that are really not so related. One has to, um, with the time. I know when the forties and seventies and I a called, you know, there was a writer, a, a and, and a dramatic a actress, and through them I want to a history.

[00:16:58] Adela: Those areas, music, painting, um, write and, and drama, um, by engaging their life stories with the war. Um, I wanna do that because at depends on, we have a paper was writer and a filmmaker. Um, and so this is a very concise project. My, my most, a. Ambitious project has with the relationship between literature, which is my area and technologies, and I wanna study the 19th century.

[00:17:33] Adela: And the idea is think of literature, not so much in only a terms, but think of literature of changes in perception as we were impacted by technologies like you. Film, the photograph, the typewriter, but then later on, digital technology. And I wanna come to, you know, end the book maybe in our time. But that book is gonna take a while and maybe more years because of my position now.

[00:18:08] Frederick: Mm-hmm. Iett of the authors that you love. What might, can you throw out maybe a couple of names for our listeners to go to, to look up, um, to read to en en enjoy, to learn from?

[00:18:30] Adela: Yes. Well, um, there is a Mexican writer, uh, like contemporary, like that I, I like maybe better. In three novels and like, I think two short stories collection.

[00:18:48] Adela: The last one is

[00:19:00] Adela: no trafficking, no migration, um, but the way conveys. It challenges. It’s not a very realistic or sociological mood, but in AIC way, and I think he’s a very good writer. And I mean, I think people enjoy eating

[00:19:31] Frederick: dialogue. What are. I’m sorry, what? Uh, could you repeat the, the name of the author and maybe a couple of titles if, if they come to mind?

[00:19:40] Adela: So he’s, he’s well novel in English called the, and the author is Uri, y u r i, Arrera, H E R R E r. And this is a fascinating novel. It’s a short one. It’s easy to read, and I really recommend it. The other writer I think is very interesting to to read now. Name is

[00:20:21] Adela: depends. And she well known knowledge or Awan? Gar, literally. But mostly because he’s also a fighter for women rights, Mexico. Her last or more recent is about, her sister was assassinated when she was 20. And, and it’s a very powerful book, uh, that taking a big impact, it makes go about the problem of the mini style, those two contemporary writers.

[00:21:03] Adela: I recommend

[00:21:04] Frederick: Highly beautiful Adela. I know you’re doing so much there. Um, at the Benson, can you share. Maybe a couple of, um, I don’t know, visions, goals, aims that you have for us at UT

[00:21:21] Adela: Austin. Well, um, I think, um, UT has probably, you know, the best Latin American studies to in the country and the. That’s an American collection in the country.

[00:21:39] Adela: Um, having a partnership between is two institutions. The institute and the collection is something very unique. I think we are very fortunate to be able to dynamize archive archival knowledge through research and teaching. I think this is what makes Lila Benon such a unique. I also think is, um, our understanding of Latin American studies from a horizontal perspective, thinking that Latin America is not the social laboratory to study problems.

[00:22:17] Adela: Thinking that there is a side of exchange of ideas, of knowledge and that we can learn a lot from Latin America as well. I think also that has made less than some a very.

[00:22:33] Frederick: Oh my gosh, yes. So needed, so necessary. And I’m so excited to be with you at this epicenter for the real push for this kind of horizontal exchange interchange of knowledge of the Americas Adella. Um, thank you so much for taking the time to share a little bit of your journey with us and. Gosh, just, you know, it’s wonderful to be your c.

[00:23:06] Adela: Thanks Eric. I have to say the same. I feel so happy and honored to be your colleague and I’m so glad you are at VT Austin and that we can share many internet and thank you for giving me this space to talk about myself.

[00:23:20]Into The Colaverse is produced by the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts Sound Engineering by the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services.You can find Into The Colaverse Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Thanks for listening and see you next time.