Manolo Vela Castañeda
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/manoloevelacastaneda
Manolo Vela Castañeda (PhD, El Colegio de Mexico), who joins the Institute for the academic year, is associate professor of sociology at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. Previously, he directed the Program of Research on History and Memory at FLACSO Guatemala.
His Kellogg project, “The Cold War in Central America: New Findings with Comparative Perspectives (1944–1996),” explores both the social bases of insurgency in the region and state capacity in order to explain the processes that shaped the conflict in the region.
Vela will study the conflict “from below”— peasants and rural communities—and “from above”—national and transnational political elites—thus integrating previous research. Using case studies and various comparative strategies, he aims to debunk old myths, such as the bipolar interpretation of the war.
Vela received the 2009 Mexican Academy of Science “Best Social Science Dissertation” award for “Death Platoons: The Construction of Guatemala’s Genocide Perpetrators.” The author of several books and numerous journal articles, reports, and book chapters, he has served as a consultant for the Myrna Mack Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme.
