A visiting professor addressed an audience on the effect of the Enlightenment on South American ports as a part of Latin American Heritage Month in Booth Library on Monday.

Mariselle Meléndez, an associate professor of colonial Latin American literatures and cultures, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, gave a presentation titled, “Geographies of Patriotism: Caribbean Ports in the Age of Enlightenment.”

Meléndez said the importance of ports grew during the Enlightenment, especially in the southwestern hemisphere, where merchants and residents faced the threat of piracy, nature and an absence of European comforts.

“Oceans became a dangerous contact zone that kept colonial authorities in a state of fear,” Meléndez said. “In the 18th century, port meant a safe place.”

Meléndez focused her speech on the role of the port of Callao, located nine miles to the west of Peru’s capital, Lima. Meléndez said Callao was strongly connected to Lima.

“Callao was an ethnically and culturally diverse port by 18th century standards,” Meléndez said. The port’s Spanish government attempted to control Africans, indigenous South Americans and Spaniards.

Meléndez said the port’s authorities took advantage of a tsunami that hit the ports in 1746 as a way to exert more control on the city and create a more organized community.

“What was paramount was to eliminate the chaos that existed before and replace it with a sense of order,” Meléndez said.

Meléndez utilized 18th century maps of South America as well as Callao and the port’s military installations as part of her presentation.

Vanesa Landrus, an Associate Professor of Spanish at Eastern, said the maps of Callao’s military buildings after the tsunami were a way to emphasize order and control that were so important to Western cultures during the Enlightenment.

“Showing the map and seeing how they were visualized is ground breaking,” Landrus said. “It’s a chance to see how Callao was reshaped.”

Aseret Gonzalez, a senior sociology major, said before Meléndez’s presentation she had not considered the complex combination of economic and military life in a port, especially after the tsunami.

“It’s a topic you usually don’t learn about,” Gonzalez said.

Meléndez said American society can continue to benefit from studying ports such as Callao that faced threats, both internally and externally, from military and ethnic tension.

“Ports are the faces of countries,” Meléndez said. “They’re still a space where people meet and converge.”

Andrew Crivilare can be reached at 581-7943 or [email protected].