Manuel AlcántaraAlcántara Receives O’Higgins Award

Former Visiting Fellow Manuel Alcántara has received the Bernardo O’Higgins Order of Merit, Chile’s highest honor for foreigners. Chile’s ambassador to Spain, Gonzalo Martner, presented the award at the Spanish embassy in Madrid on January 26, 2010.

Alcántara, a distinguished Latin Americanist, is chair of the Political Science Department and former director of the Latin American Institute at the University of Salamanca. He was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute in 2000 and again in 2007.

In his acceptance speech, Alcántara described Chile as a country of poets, novelists, and playwrights, a country that had influenced him from his youth. Chile is “a case study of great relevance” in the field of political science, he said, noting as well the many ways in which the histories of Spain and Chile have intertwined over the years.

Named after Chile’s founding father and first president, the Bernardo O’Higgins awards recognize foreign citizens for their outstanding participation in the arts, sciences, and social cooperation, as well as for defense of eternal and universal values such as freedom, justice, and tolerance.