Today’s Post is a Q&A with a new member of the EMSWG. Dr. Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez  is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History and the Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages. 

1. Can you tell us a bit about your background (academic and otherwise)? Where are you from? Where else have you taught, researched, etc?

I was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. I went to college at Los Andes University in Bogotá, where I majored in history and minored in Geography and Anthropology. The department of History at Los Andes is a true gem. There I had the chance to learn from a diverse and innovative faculty in areas like environmental history, the history of science, and colonial and modern Latin America. I cultivated an interest in indigenous history and the early modern Spanish empire, which has continued to guide my work.

In 2011, I moved to New Haven, CT, to work on my Ph.D. in History, which I took from Yale University in 2018. I was strongly influenced by the faculty in the History Department in areas like Latin American, Atlantic, Native American, Borderlands, and Early Modern History, but also by the incredible Agrarian Studies program led by James C. Scott. In 2017, I began a position as Assistant Professor of History at Los Andes University, where I taught for three years before coming to UConn.

As a student of the Spanish empire in South America, my research has taken me to archives and research libraries in Spain, the United Kingdom, Colombia, and the United States.

2. Can you tell us about your previous works/projects?

My research to date has examined how the indigenous peoples of South America engaged in the creation and contestation of the Spanish empire in South America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My first book, published in Spanish under the title Costumbres en disputa: los Muiscas y el imperio español en Ubaque, siglo XVI, revisits the encomienda as a global, transcultural institution that took shape in the daily encounters between Indigenous peoples (in this case the Muisca  of the northern Andes) and the Spanish settlers in the 16th century.

I have also published widely on the history of Colombia’s map, from the earliest Indigenous and European depictions of the New World to the early 20th century.

3. What are your current projects?

I am currently at work converting my dissertation into a book. This project is a history of the making of a centralized polity, an entity of imperial governance termed the “New Kingdom of Granada”, amidst the diverse ethnic groups and landscapes of northern South America (present-day Colombia). At the time of the conquest, this area was composed of a patchwork of very different groups and landscapes with no cultural or political unity. In my research I ask how the Spanish imperial state sought to extend its rule upon the mountainous landscapes of the New Kingdom of Granada and convert the diverse Indian groups into catholic, tribute-paying vassals from the Spanish invasion in 1530s to 1650.

I also have several ongoing projects in public history and digital humanities. In 2015, I cofounded Neogranadina—a Colombian non-profit organization devoted to making digitization and digital tools available to local archives and community groups in Latin America. In 2021, I will launch Colonial Landscapes: Redrawing Andean Territories in the 17th Century—a digital history project that explores the transformation of indigenous homelands into colonial landscapes through the analysis of a 17th-century painting of the Bogota savannah.

I am looking forward to collaborating with students and faculty at UConn in areas like: Native American and Indigenous history; early modern history; the history of books, maps, and textual artifacts; agrarian and environmental history; and digital and public history.

4. What sparked your interest in pursuing your current project?

I believe that revisiting the history of early modern empires (and the modern world) from the point of view of Native American peoples is essential to our current world. And the new voices and stories that emerge must be narrated in formats that are available to different audiences. This conviction has motivated my current projects and those I envision for the future.

5. What are your other interests? (As a scholar or otherwise—everyday preoccupations, hobbies, grand ambitions, etc.?) Do these other interests inform your research in some way and, if so, how?

I am a very committed rock climber. Though right now my greatest ambition is to be able to actually arrive in Storrs, CT—a seemingly simple task that has proven unachievable in the pandemic world. (While I formally began my position as Assistant Professor of History and Spanish in January 2020, I am teaching virtually from Tenjo, a rural area in the outskirts of Bogotá.)