Raphael Folsom

While at El Colegio, Mr. Folsom will work on two research projects. The first is a broad social and cultural examination of the advance of the Spanish Empire into the so-called "Spanish Borderlands" region. By analyzing the relationship between the native peoples and the European invaders in these stateless border regions that were ethnically diverse centers of cultural formation, he hopes to contribute to our knowledge of the long-term processes of Mexico s state formation and the state's contested relations with indigenous peoples and grassroots movements. Mr. Folsom also intends to complete a volume of essays, tentatively titled "The Hemispheric Trade Debate," on the Free Trade Area of the Americas which grew out of a conference he recently helped organize at Yale. As a Fox Fellow at El Colegio, Mr. Folsom will search the Mexican National Archives, archives of Universidad Iberoamericana, the Mexican National Library and National Institute of Anthropology and History.