biography
pronunciation:
[palerm veech]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1917–80)
|
| biography:
| Historian and ethnographer, born in Ibiza, Spain. He completed his schooling in Ibiza and Palma de Mallorca, but the outbreak of the Civil War frustrated his plans to study law and history at the University of Barcelona. He joined the CNT and later the FAI, which formed part of the Republican Army. He commanded a division and took part in the battle of the Ebro and in the defence of Catalunya, where he was wounded. When the war was lost, he fled to France and then into exile in Mexico, which became his adopted country. He joined the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, graduated in history in 1949, and became a Mexican national in 1951. A year later he moved to Washington, where his political career was rapid: executive assistant to the secretary-general of the OAS (1958–61); director of the Department of Social Affairs of the OAS (1961–65), and at the same time professor of anthropology of the American University (1960–5) and visiting professor of the Catholic University (1961). His criticism of US interference in Vietnam and in the Caribbean led to his expulsion from the country and his subsequent return to Mexico (1965). During his stay in the USA he established contact with Steward and other anthropologists who specialized in complex Mesoamerican societies, and with them organized a series of discourses which the Panamerican Union then published in Spanish and English. In 1972 he published Agricultura y civilización en Mesoamérica. |
|
|
