Every year, many fall victim to the endless violence in Mexico brought on by narcotics and the cartels pushing them.
As early as 2006, the BBC tallied deaths at about 60,000. This summer, a member of the UH community will be living in Guadalajara, Jalisco in Mexico to study the side effects of this violence, with funding from the Core Fulbright Scholar Program.
“I taught a class on globalization and violence in Latin America using films, novels, short stories and testimonial narrative,” said Associate Professor Anadeli Bencomo.
“The class was very popular, and I offered it three more times. It was an intense experience for both the students and I. I decided not to teach the class again and continued with the research, and I have been invited to lecture about this topic in Mexico.”
According to the site, the Core Fulbright program sends 800 U.S. professionals internationally each year, where the receivers of this grant give lectures and conduct research in a vast spectrum of fields. To attain the grant, Bencomo was required to apply.
“I wrote a proposal, and then as a finalist, I was interviewed by a committee of Mexican scholars who asked different questions about the project,” Bencomo said.
At UH, Bencomo normally teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on Latin American studies. She will be leaving mid-summer to spend a year in Mexico. There, she will be teaching about narrative accounts written in Latin American journalism called “cronicas.”
“I will be teaching at the University of Guadalajara on the writings by the young authors who cannot avoid writing about current violence in their country,” Bencomo said.
In her year there, her presence will be missed.
“She is incredibly adept at making students feel like their opinions matter and are important, but also worth revisiting and challenging,” said UH alumnus Gabriel Barbieri. “This enables her to manage discussion classes very well and promote debate and healthy criticism in a classroom setting with a variety of proficiencies.”
Bencomo feels the work she does there will tie into her research well, and will be seeing what impact the violence of Mexico has had on journalism itself.
“Latin American new journalism is one of the core subjects of my research as a literary scholar,” Bencomo said. “Journalism in Mexico has a long tradition, and reporting on the new realities and escalating violence is a recent version of these types of engaged writing.”
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