Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to the many people who contributed to this project from its inception to its completion. It has been a long journey from meeting in 2014 to engage in this dialogue to the publication of this volume, so I sincerely hope I don’t forget anyone!

Upon arriving in Treaty 7 territory at the University of Calgary in 2012, and given my own research interests in the Mexican oil expropriation of 1938, I began to conceive of a conference that would bring together energy scholars from the Americas to discuss histories of energy and society in ways that were more reflective than the uncritical boosterism that pervaded the oil industry boom going on here at that time. I received tremendous support and encouragement from the the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, the Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Calgary International, and especially the Latin American Research Centre (LARC) at the University of Calgary, which enabled me to secure a SSHRC Connection Grant for the organization of the conference. LARC program coordinator Monique Greenwood, and several student assistants, provided invaluable logistical support. Colleagues from History, Latin American Studies, Political Science, and Anthropology all stepped up to participate in the three-day event, and I am grateful to Hendrik Kraay, Saulesh Yessenova, Denise Brown, Stephen Randall, Heather Devine, Pablo Policzer, and Sarah Jordaan, as well as Annette Hester, then of the Inter-American Development Bank, for chairing panels and facilitating our discussions. Harrie Vredenburg gave a stimulating keynote, and Peter Fortna, Hereward Longley, and Tara Joly of Willow Springs Strategic Solutions and Bori Arrobo, representing the Fort McKay First Nation, presented the film Moose Lake: Home and Refuge and led a discussion of Indigenous perspectives on Alberta oil sands development.

We welcomed an amazing group of scholars from all over the world, including my colleagues Paul Chastko, Petra Dolata, and Dominique Perron, as well as senior and emerging scholars who presented exciting research from throughout the hemisphere: Juan Pablo Bohórquez Montoya, Michael Camp, Gustav Cederlof, Elvin Delgado, Joseph García, Martín Garrido Lepe, Eric Gettig, Linda Hall, Chris Hebdon, Pablo Heidrich, Don Kingsbury, Robert Lifset, Daniel Macfarlane, Jeffrey Manuel, Brian McBeth, Patricia McCormack, Dermot O’Connor, Joseph Pratt, Tyler Priest, João Rodrigues Neto, Isabelle Rousseau, Mar Rubio, Esteban Serrani, Mark Sholdice, Gail Triner, Richard Unger, and César Yáñez. The depth and quality of our discussions in Calgary and Banff were a testament to the excellent research this wonderful group of scholars presented.

Because we were fortunate to be so numerous at the conference, the fact that not all of the presenters’ works are represented in this volume should definitely not be taken as a reflection of the quality of their contributions to the literature; it is, rather, simply a matter of logistics. Several of the participants joined in a discussion with the students of my undergraduate integrative seminar in Latin American Studies (LAST 401), and I am grateful for the quality of these students’ engagement in the conference and their wonderful work on the topic of energy over the course of the semester. Allan Abbasi, Sarah Arnett, Mike Baker, Mayda Borbely, Alem Cherinet, Anita Demeter, Camilo Gil González, Dominik Maslanka, Rayna Oryniak, and Lina Pulido: I’m sure I learned as much from you as I did from the conference itself!

The journey from conference proceedings to published book has taken seven long years and has included more than the usual number of delays that edited volumes seem always to occasion, and I am deeply grateful for the continued patience of my collaborators and of Brian Scrivener and Helen Hajnoczky at the University of Calgary Press. My colleagues Hendrik Kraay and Petra Dolata, editors, respectively, of the Latin America and Caribbean Studies and the Energy Histories, Cultures, and Politics series at the University of Calgary Press, both provided constant encouragement, and Petra in particular generously gave significant feedback on my introduction to this volume. Graduate students Davíd Barrios, Andrés Lalama Vargas, and Andrew Wiley each provided invaluable assistance. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers who helped to make the volume better in so many ways, by pushing us all to sharpen our focus and increase the dialogue between and among the contributors’ chapters. Copy editor Ryan Perks similarly pushed us to tighten up our prose. The entire team at the press has been excellent to work with and I appreciate their professionalism. I would also never have been able to complete this project if not for the support of my husband, research facilitator extraordinaire Jonathan Jucker, and not only because he did the index.

By the time this book was ready to go to press, the University of Calgary and the Province of Alberta had entered a period of austerity due to the real challenges presented by the falling international price of oil as well as the manufactured crisis provoked by the provincial government’s policy choices, making the heady days of 2014 seem like a distant memory. I am forever grateful to Brian Scrivener for finding enough spare change between the couch cushions in the face of significant budget cuts to get this volume published. The conference—which brought together an outstanding interdisciplinary cast of participants and resulted in student engagement and community participation—and this volume, which presents evidence-based, peer-reviewed research in an open-access format, both speak to the importance of strong public investment in higher education. I am glad to have been able to have finally brought this project to fruition, and I appreciate the contributions of everyone who helped along the way.

Thank you! Merci! Obrigada! Gracias! Nitsiniiyi’taki.

Calgary, Alberta

March 2021