Flora and Fauna
Fall 2004 | Volume III, Number 1
Table of Contents
Editor’s Letter →
by June Carolyn Erlick
Guest Introduction
The Natural World
In the late spring of 1934, towards the end of my sophomore year at Harvard College, I received a letter from Dr. Frank E. Lutz, Entomology Curator at the American Museum of Natural History in…
On The David Rockefeller Collection of Coleoptera (Beetles)
On a warm August 30 in Roslyn, NY in the year 1922, a brave seven-year-old David Rockefeller picked up an inch-long brown beetle with fearsome pinching mandibles and plunged it into a jar…
Perspectives
From Agronomics to International Relations
wo strange-looking black-and-white butterflies found themselves swept up in nets one warm morning in March this year in the eastern Domini can Republic, far from chilly Cambridge…
The Nature of Nature
During a vacation in Brazil, walking along a beach, I saw these remains of fish. In their death, they took on a new life, a transformation that turned them into something else, that made the dead…
The Lens of the Past
The Herpetology of Cuba
Cuba is often on our minds for geopolitical reasons, but the island nation has long fascinated students of flora and fauna…
Flowers with Deep Latin American Roots Bloom in Cambridge
The spiky jaws of the Deioaea Miscupula (Venus’ flytrap) leaves and the gaping, pouch-like bodies of theNepenthes sanguinea (Pitcher Plant) conjure up child hood tales of carnivorous…
Digitalizing Nature
Art historians, biologists, anthropologists, historians of science, Latin Americanists and fish experts aren’t known for frequent intersections in their academic life…
The Nature of the Tropical Nature
English + Español
Statements that Brazil has been blessed in terms of nature. Indeed, from our earliest childhood, we learn to identify our country through enthusiastic manifestations about the wonders…
Orchid Herbarium of Oakes Ames
Harvard’s Orchid Herbarium of Oakes Ames (AMES) contains about 131,000 specimens, in addition to a library of about 5,000 books, reprints, and journals. The herbarium also houses a…
The Nature of Tropical Nature
To a Brazilian, nothing sounds more familiar than statements that Brazil has been blessed in terms of nature. Indeed, from our earliest childhood, we learn to identify our country through…
Conservation
Birding on the Edge of the World
The dirt road crossed the pass at about 15,000 feet and entered a wide treeless valley, without any sign of human presence. Flanked by jagged hills, thevalley spread below the peaks…
A Survey of Costa Rican Birds
Put down your weapons and don’t move!” From the dense vegetation of the Costa Rican forest, five men dressed in camouflage uniforms and armed with carbines burst into view and ran across the road…
In Search of a Hummingbird
Like the interior of a sealed adobe oven, the early morning air smothers us as we search in vain for the elusive Honduran Emerald hummingbird. Organ pipe cacti, acacia trees, and thorn…
Citizenship
Nature and Citizenship
Two first-time visitors to the Galapagos archipelago begin their experience in exactly the same way. Two hours after departing mainland Ecuador, their plane descends towards the island of…
Bioprospecting
In 1998, as the Zapatista uprising continued to simmer in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, two U.S. academic researchers began setting up a “bioprospecting” agreement there. With funds…
El Tesoro de Volcán
Carlos Beita and his cousin Alfonso, rugged-looking ranchers both, squat beside biologist Ruth Tiffer as she explains how to take samples from a stream bed. Scooping a rock from the current…
The Tragic Saga of the Scorpion Flower
English + Español
Back then, Orchis, the son of a nymph and a satyr, encountered the entourage of Dionysios, the son of Zeus and god of ecstatic celebration, in a forest. Suddenly infatuated…
Student Perspectives
Highlights of Cuban Colonial History
On January 6, 2002, el cabildo habanero, hundreds of dancers and musicians reenacted the activities of las comparsas of nineteenth-century Cuba. During the era of Cuban slavery, these…
Building Houses, Improving Lives
A house can provide much more than basic safety and shelter from the rain. As an intern for Habitat for Humanity in San Ramon, Costa Rica, I discovered that for many Habitat partner…
The Vicious Violence Cycle
I was working at the Global Justice Center, a Brazilian human rights NGO when the prison rebellion at the Benfica House of Detention begun on May 29, 2004. During the 62 hours that the…
Comings and Goings
Kenneth Maxwell at DRCLAS
As the new coordinator of Brazilian Studies at the David Rockefeller Center, it is a treat for me to write a few words on Kenneth Maxwell’s arrival to DRCLAS, where he is now a Senior Fellow. To…
Book Launching Becomes Protest
Sixty-five chairs sat empty in protest for the denial of visas to the same number Cuban academics. A book launching party transformed into a special session on “Academic Freedom…
Puerto Rico Winter Institute
Culture at the Crossroads” will be the theme of the inaugural program of the Puerto Rico Winter Institute January 10-28, 2005 in San Juan. Each year the Institute, a joint collaboration of…
Book Talk
Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education
After an exhausting game of soccer with a crew of Mexico City street children, Vicente, a young teenager of 13 said, “Vamonos a la verga.” It was my third day with Casa Alianza, the international…
Disappeared: A Journalist Silenced
The cover of Disappeared: A Journalist Silenced depicts the Guatemalan journalist Irma Flaquer holding up a page in her left hand as if proofreading. Yet, her eyes are not looking at the paper…
Paradise in Ashes
Traditionally, anthropologists have divorced themselves emotionally and physically from their subjects, placing the highest priority on objectivity and the role of the anthropologist as expert…
Llamas, Weavings, and Organic Chocolate
first met Kevin “Benito” Healy a little over four years ago at an information session he gave to a group of State Department Foreign Service officers on their way to assignments in the Andes. After the session, I asked Healy…
Cacaos y tigres de papel
During the political crisis that almost toppled the government of President Ernesto Samper, no one examined the role played by business. This was despite the fact that, on several occasions…
Alambrista and the U.S.- Mexico Border
Whether it’s the traditional Mexican corrido that accompanies the birth of a baby girl in Michoacan, Mexico, or the “Okie-Dokie Shuffle” which underscores the diversity of cultures…