NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS:

A prize-winning Uruguayan poet and critic/theorist, Hugo Achugar has published innumerable books including literary studies of Donoso, Uruguayan modernism and testimonio, as well as Latin American and Uruguayan post-modernity (see our Bibliograp hy for some of his recent texts).  He holds his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and is former Full Professor of Latin American Literature at Northwestern University; he currently teaches in his native country, which he represents at innumerab le conferences dealing with the cultural implications of neo-liberalism and MERCOSUR.

Arturo Arias, novelist and literary critic, is a native of Guatemala. Born in 1950, he earned a Ph.D. in the Sociology of Literature from the Université de Paris; and he currently Professor of Humanities at San Francisco State University.   His best known novel is Después de las bombas (México. Joaquín Mortiz: 1979), later translated as After the Bombs (Willimantic, CT.  1990).  His other novels include Itzam na (1981), winner of Cuba's Cas a de las Américas prize; Jaguar en llamas. (Guatemala 1989); and Los caminos de Paxil (Guatemala 1990). His literary study, Ideologías, literatura y sociedad durante la revolución guatemalteca won him the Casa de las Américas prize in criticism; forthcoming is another full scale literary study, La identidad de la palabra: Narrativa guatemalteca a la luz del nuevo siglo.

A native of Argentina, Nora Bonnin has become a classic case of Chicago Latino-ization since she installed with her family in Chicago's Mexican Pilsen barrio.  At the University of Illinois at Chicago, she has explored literary, anthropolog ical, political and historical approaches to cultural studies while studying Sociology and Latin American Studies and pursuing an advanced degree in History.  She works on transnational relations at UIC's John Nuveen Center of International Affairs a nd is currently doing research on epidemics and social relations.  In 1997, she participated in the UIC-ColMich program on transnational relations in Zamora, Mexico.

Robert Scott Curry, a former student at UIC,  has earned a graduate degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa and now moved on to Austin, Texas.  A co-translater of Zimmerman and Rojas's Guatemala: Voices from the Sile nce (1997), he has written mainly on questions of post-Marxist and post-colonial theory in relation to Latin American cinema. In addition to his own essay, he is the translator of Hugo Achugar's essay in this volume.

Elizam Escobar is a Puerto Rican painter and writer imprisoned in the United States since 1980 for his participation in the struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico.  He earned a B.A. in Fine Arts at the University of Puerto Rico and wa s a teacher at the School of Art of El Museo del Barrio in New York City.  His art work has been exhibited widely, and his writings have appeared in various art and cultural journals and books, including the following anthologies: Disparities and Connections: The Excluded on Postmodernism, (1991), which he edited; Reimaging America: The Arts of Social Change, (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1990), edited by Mark O'Brien and Craig Little; and The Subversive Imagination: Artists , Society, and Social Responsibility, (New York: Routledge, 1994), ed. by Carol Becker.  Jack Hirshman and Csaba Polony are working on a collection of his essays to be published by Curbstone Press. 

An Uruguayan student of anthropology, film and communications, Marquesa Macadar studied at UIC, and then went on to graduate work at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she has studied questions of modernity and globalization, written innumer able studies, embarked on a collective EMAIL-concocted postmodrnized novel and collaborated fulltime plus on the new Chicago cultural magazine, Zorros y Erizos.  Inveterate traveller, she wanders the Americas and the streets of Montevideo and Chicago 's Mexican/Latino barrios.

Silvia A. Malagrino, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is an artist and professor at the School of Art and Design at UIC.  Her work has been exhibited widely and is represented in collections the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Ins titution, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee Art Museum, la Bibliotheque National de France, the Fundaçao Athos Bulçao in Brasilia, among others.  Recent solo exhibitions include multimedia installations  at the Rockford A rt Museum, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and the Center for Photography in Woodstock, New York.  She has also appeared in group exhibitions at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Rice University Media Cent er, and the Institute of Art of Chicago.  Mónica Flores Correa, whose text is part of Malagrino's essay, is a New York-based Argentine writer and journalist who has worked with Amnesty International and is currently a correspondent for the Arg entine newspaper, Página Doce.

Born of Chilean parents in Lima Peru (1970), Patricio Navia was reared in Chile, but emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, earning degrees in Sociology and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago, the latter involving a thesis on women's electoral participation in Chile in 1965.  He is  pursuing doctoral work at New York University with a focus on Latin American politics and political culture.  He has collaborated with MARC:Zimmerman in Guatemala: Voces desde el silencio (Guatemala 1993), to appear in English with U. of Ohio Press in 1998.

Michael Piazza is a Chicago-based visual artist and writer who teaches Art, Culture and Education at Columbia College and De Paul University. Co-founder of Axe Street Arena Artists Collective, he holds an MFA from the School of Art and Architect ure of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recently he has been working on collaborative art projects like "At Night in the Grand Court--A Renovation," an interdisciplinary art installation with resident youth at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Dete ntion Center. His work has appeared in New Art Examiner, Whitewalls: A Journal of Language and Art, Left Curve and a volume he edited with Elizam Escobar, Disparities and Connections (1991).

Born in Chinandega, Nicaragua and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State University, Ileana Rodríguez studied Philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma de México and received her Ph.D. in Latin Am erican Literature at the University of California, San Diego, with a dissertation on Alejo Carpentier.  Winner of various grants, she held several major positions in Nicaragua during the Sandinista years and also worked as a bibliographer for Cuba's Casa de las Américas.  Her editions-in- collaboration with MARC:Zimmerman and others include: Nicaragua in Revolution: The Poets Speak (Mpls.: MEP, 1980); Processes of Unity in Caribbean Societies, Ideologies and Literature (Mpls.: Inst itute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1983).  Her books include: El primer inventario del invasor (Managua: Ed. Nueva Nicaragua, 1984); Registradas en la historia: 10 años de quehacer feminista en Nicaragua (Managua: Vanguardia, 1989); House/Garden/Nation: Representations of Space, Ethnicity, and Gender in Transitional Post-Colonial Literatures by Women (Duke U. Press, 1994); and Women, Guerrillas, and Love: Understanding War in Central America (Mpls: U. of Minnesota Press, 1996).  A co-founder of the Latin American Subaltern Group, she is currently at work on methods of constructing discourses defining fields of knowledge.

Kartik Vora, from Bombay, India, graduated from the College of Art and Architecture at the U. of Illinois at Chicago.  He is currently working on computer technologies and cultivating his interest in postcolonial and postmodern studies.&nbs p; A member of the Editorial Committee of Chicago's Whitewalls: A Journal of Language and Art, he continues his work on performance art and border thinking, bringing his perspective even to U.S. Latino Cultural Studies.

 Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Marc Zimmerman holds his doctorate from the U. of California, San Diego (1974).  He has taught at various universities and also worked in the Literature Sec tion of the Nicaragua's Ministry of Culture in 1979-80.   His books and editions in collaboration include: Lucien Goldmann y el estructuralismo genético, and Processes of Unity in Caribbean Societies, Ideologies and Literature (Mpls.: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1983 and 1985); The Central American Quartet (collage epics, Nicaragua in Revolution, Nicaragua in Reconstruction and at War, El Salvador at War and Guatemala: Voces desde el silencio [Mpls.: MEP, 1980, 1985 and 1988; Guatemala: Palo de Hormigo & Oscar León Palacios, 1993]). Other recent volumes include: Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions (Austin: U. of Texas, 1990--with John Beverley) ; U.S. Latino Literature: An Essay and Annotated Bibliography (Chicago: MARCH/Abrazo Press, 1992); and Literature and Resistance in Guatemala: Textual Modes and Cultural Politics from El Señor Presidente to Rigoberta Menchú (U. of Ohio Press).  He is currently completing Tropicalizing Hegemony: Latin American Culture and Literature in Transnational Context, to be published by Roman and Littlefield.  He directs the Chicago Latin American/Latino/a Cultural Activi ties and Studies Arena (LACASA CHICAGO) sponsored by  MARCH/Abrazo Press; he is a fellow in UIC's Great Cities Institute.