I would like to thank Dr. Robert Hurley and Mrs. Brenda Hurley, once again, for their generosity and for making my internship at the Argentine Institute of Research in Arid Zones (IAZDA), under The National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Mendoza, Argentina possible. As a student in Joint Honours Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Anthropology, my studies have been intersectional. One of my most crucial takeaways has been the importance of collaborative research with Indigenous and marginalized communities on any project. This is an indispensable factor in productive, equitable and sustainable research and development. This internship was an opportunity to see how that is applied. CONICET, as a whole, has a wide range of missions and projects across the different institutes it contains, IAZDA focuses on arid zones and desertification. The province of Mendoza is by nature an arid zone, which contains a considerable amount of desert. However, due to urban expansion and climate change, the oases that once existed are disappearing and communities that were able to thrive in the rural areas of the province are struggling. With a team made up of geographers and a range of social scientists, IAZDA takes an interdisciplinary approach to these issues, allowing for both the social and the technical aspects to be considered.
The learning objectives for my internship included: exchanging knowledge with the rest of the research team regarding collaborative research with Indigenous communities and using Indigenous worldviews to inform conservation in the Latin American context, developing strategies in collaboration with outside stakeholders, and to better understand the relationship between socio-economic and environmental-biological challenges in the region. These goals were achieved through my roles and responsibilities throughout my internship. I was tasked with doing a literature review of the projects that IAZDA was conducting at the time; I translated two academic papers for publication, making the extremely important research coming out of the institute more accessible for global audiences; I created prior, informed and voluntary consent templates for the researchers and taught them that process, as it is just beginning to be used in Argentina; I took notes and transcribed meetings with stakeholders including the national offices for the management of forests and wildfires and the United Nations; I helped to write scripts for, and conduct interviews. All these experiences were rewarding in their own ways; however, my personal highlight was assisting in fieldwork.
I visited Lagunas de Rosario, a Huarpe community in Mendoza. The day consisted of organizing with the leaders of the community for workshops took place in June and July, where members were able to let researchers know what they need to investigate in order to appeal to the municipality for reorganization in resource management. Considering that Mendoza is a desert region, the most pertinent of these resources is water. This Indigenous community used to be entirely dependent on the lagoons they lived around- they fished, irrigated their crops and travelled using canoes. However, due to urbanization and global warming, they have been obligated to adapt because, 10 years ago, water stopped coming entirely.
This will shape my understanding of applied research for the rest of my academic future and will inform my approaches as a social scientist. The opportunity that this award granted me was much more than funding; it was a steppingstone to learning what I want to do with my education and my future career, and it was, on a more personal note, a chance for me to learn about where I come from in a constructive way. I have never had the privilege of spending so much time in Argentina, learning and engaging with the country my parents come from and the culture I hold so close to my heart.
Thank you to the McGill International Experience Awards founders, and Brenda and Morrison Hurley for making this experience possible.
