2027 MLA Convention

Los Angeles, CA | January 7-10, 2027

Officially ceded to the United States on February 2, 1848, via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican American War and incorporated to the American Union on September 9, 1850, the state of California seemed to have lost its cultural, linguistic, and historic ties with its former sovereign nation, Mexico, and, more broadly speaking, the rest of Latin America. On the contrary, from the late 1840s to the present time, individuals and communities from California and Latin America have continued to connect these territories through language, media, politics, goods, and more. For instance, during the Gold Rush, “forty-niners” coming from Mexico, Chile, and Peru, recorded their vivid experiences at the mines, while also condemning the acts of racial violence committed at the hands of the Anglo-Americans. Later on, by the late 1850s, Californios wrote in local newspapers about their membership in Latin America and la raza latina (the Latin race), calling themselves latinoamericanos. Since then, invasions, conflicts, migrations, collaborations, agreements, exchanges, influences, and more have made California not only a Latin American region but one of the main centers of Latin American culture. 

This session explores the transcontinental literary, artistic, and cultural exchange between California and Latin America from the 1846-1848 war to the present. Possible topics include (but not limited to): 

• The Gold Rush perceived and experienced by “forty-niners” from Chile, Mexico, Peru, and other countries.

• Fiction set in the nineteenth century or during the Gold Rush.

• Travel writing, diaries, memoirs, and other forms of writing to record the events of a journey by land, water, and air.

• Means of communication, from letters to text/video messaging, as immediate and direct communication between two or more individuals across different locations.

• Printing, journalism, and periodical publications. 

• The popularization of world’s fairs to promote trade and commerce among countries along the Pacific Ocean.

• Ambassadorship, diplomacy, and foreign policy (e.g., the Good Neighbor Policy, the Bracero Program). 

Please submit 250-word abstracts to the organizer Jair Jáuregui Torres (jairjauto@berkeley.edu) by Friday, March 6th, 2026.