Tulio Halperin-Donghi

Tulio Halperin-Donghi was the Muriel McKevitt Sonne Professor Emeritus of Latin American History at the University of California, Berkeley. An internationally recognized senior historian of Latin America, Halperin-Donghi was a consummate researcher who initially focused his studies on Argentina during its post-independence era and subsequently on the 19th and 20th centuries. Already a well-known historian, by the early 1960s he had become a key member of a circle of young Argentine intellectuals who incisively criticized the dominant polarized visions of Argentine history and society. Exiled from Argentina in 1966 following the "Night of the Big Batons," he has more recently divided his time between the University of California and the University of Buenos Aires. His most influential work has been The Contemporary History of Latin America, originally published in 1967. With editions in Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Swedish, and English, by 1993 the book had gone through 13 Spanish editions, and stands as the most widely read history of modern Latin America in the Hispanic world during the second half of the 20th century. While Contemporary History offers a powerful indictment of international and domestic structures holding back the full development of the Latin American nation-states and their multifarious social and ethnic groups, it celebrates the rich variety of political and cultural movements that have tried to push forward distinct agendas. Just as importantly, Donghi's copious works on his native country have reshaped our understanding of many major problems in modern Argentine history. He held honorary doctorate degrees from Argentine national universities in Buenos Aires, Luján, Córdoba and Rosario, and from Uruguay's República. Halperin was a recipient of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile Medal, and the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction, among other prizes. He passed away in November of 2014.