Do we like what we see? Geography and History ath the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature. Interview with Federico Fernández Christlieb

UNAM Internacional: Why did you study Geography? Did you consider any other options besides UNAM?
Federico Fernández Christlieb: One of the best decisions of my life was studying at the GraduateFaculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL). I chose Geography because I could not make my mind between sciences and humanities. I considered both fields fascinating when I was about to start my undergraduate studies, so choosing a different program would have meant losing one of the sides. Geography has one foot in the sciences side and the other in humanities. And at the time when I studied, there were Geography programs in the University of Guadalajara, the Autonomous University of Guerrero, and the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, but I wanted, of course, to study at UNAM.

UI: Why is Geography taught in the FFyL at UNAM?
FFC: Geography is a classical discipline, just as Philosophy or History, and that’s why it became a program in FFyL, which I consider good fortune because for me because I had the chance to interact with historians and philosophers as well as with playwrights, writers, and pedagogues.

UI: After Geography, you followed History...
FFC: Interaction with History students took me closer to their discipline. I took several elective courses in the History program and became convinced that it was impossible to be a geographer without knowing Mexican history in the first place. So, I started a second bachelor’s degree in History but I later decided it would be better to pursue a Master’s degree instead.

UI: How was your experience as a FFyL student? What was the faculty like back then, what distinguished it from other schools and faculties?
FFC: Since the very first semester I studied at FFyL I knew that it would be home for my intellectual vocation. I enrolled in August 1983. Back then I believed that everything important was happening inside those classrooms and hallways. I got to know my country there, as well as gain the sense of solidarity, friendship, love, and struggle. I went through years in which public academic institutions rebelled against neoliberalism in education. What we did then: stopping the initiative of imposing fees and tuition, reveals to us today its full scope alongside the fact that students are always right.

I never left my faculty. Ever since I finished graduate school, there I was standing again, teaching Latin American Geography. I continue to teach today and I am still directing several undergraduate and graduate theses. FFyL will always be at the avant-garde, keeping a step ahead of social needs. The diversity residing in it is infinite, both from professors and the identities of the students.

UI: Which teachers influenced your education? Could you mention a couple of names and why they became so important to you?
FFC: Tobyanne Berenberg recited the Soviet version of the post-World War II global order. I sometimes had to argue against her (because that’s what students do at this faculty, they question authority), but the truth is that she opened to me a broad panorama of international political complexity. She was an armored lady, just like a tank, but she carried doves inside. Ángel Bassols, on his side, took us on school trips to places like Ixtapaluca to analyze the landscape with Marxist tools that penetrated effectively under the dust covering everything. And one more, Federico Bolaños, who demonstrated to us 40 years ago that the climate crisis was coming, the same that today has us stunned while it approaches.

UI: You specialized in Geography and Land Use Planning, and focused your research on Cultural and Historical Geography, why?
FFC: The cultural recovers the original transdisciplinary meaning to Geography. We observe socioeconomic and biophysical variables at the same time, and, in addition, we pay attention to the historical processes that transform the landscape. Today it is impossible to think about facing the social and environmental crisis if we continue to work in disciplines disconnected from one another. Every problem at the convergence of society and nature has a territorial dimension and that is why geography is in the position to generate convincing studies and some possible solutions. In the same way, all problems have a historical dimension that must be known before facing them. This excites me and lets me pass the excitement on to my students.

UI: According to your experience, how has Land Use Planning evolved?
FFC: My formation as a geographer coincided with the development of Land Use Planning based on profit extraction. The faster money can be made from any intervention on the ground, the better it is for the developers. This mentality has been behind the lack of support for peasant communities, and the excessive building in cities for the last four decades, resulting in terrible outcomes for land use planning. Environmental deterioration is also explained by the unlimited rapacity of developers and their political accomplices since they are the ones who decide. However, they cannot say that science has not warned them of the need to plan prior to any decision. Since the 1960s and 1970s there have been serious studies on the danger of unleashing an economy without rules. Rachel Carson, Donella Meadows, and Barbara Ward have said at international forums, and in Mexico, no one warned better than Víctor Manuel Toledo.

We are probably standing on the border of experiencing a shift towards Geography in both science and humanities. For the coming decades, it will be necessary to think that challenges cannot longer be faced in the way we have been facing them. We cannot try to solve problems with the same logic and the same tools with which we have created them. Now we have to think geographically. This does not imply having a degree in Geography, but to geographically observe the landscapes resulting from the socio-environmental crisis. Do we like what we see? Do we like the deforested and eroded Paricutín? Do we enjoy watching migrant caravans in Chiapas putting their lives at risk? Do we like what we have produced in Santa Fe, an aerial city that ignores that another one lies below? Are all those dantesque landscapes related to the advertisement storm appearing on the radio and social networks? We need to correlate; we need to understand, for example, that water is a regional system and not a list of concessions and pipelines; we need to understand the problems as long-term processes and not as six-year eventualities. No phenomenon occurs alone, everything is linked: economics, politics, ecology, and education. Geographic thought is that: correlating the global with the local, the environmental with the cultural, and the past with the future.

Geographic thought must be nurtured with the experiences from grops of citizens who have shown resilience in their relationship with the environment. It turns out that after five decades of touting global economic development based on biased indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), we are realizing that activities such as mega-mining, which precisely increase GDP, have a very strong impact on local communities. The cultural geography approach allows us to show what is happening on the local scale, which is the scale at which we live. At this level we find out that the mining company has taken the water away and contaminated the soil. Without water and soil, it is impossible to plant. And it is at this local scale where the family dining table is set. In the opposite side, from the investors’ desks and screens the environment nor the results of their operations can be seen. They only look at their profits in the global market, which is a distant abstraction. Among geography students there is a lot of curiosity in understanding how some of the original groups in our country have managed to survive by being sustainable and managing their environment. It is notorious then, that these students are already acquiring geographical thought.

UI: Finally, what does it mean for you to be a teacher at FFyL?
FFC: Tuesdays and Thursdays are my favorite days. I prepare slides in detail to discuss with my students in class. I present some topics as if I were lecturing, but a student quickly puts me back in my place. I come out of class feeling refreshed and rejuvenated so to speak. I also teach Geography at UNAM’s National School of Earth Sciences, and the combination of both academic entities is absolutely refreshing; I strive to plan joint activities between both and I am convinced of the high quality of UNAM students. I have been a visiting professor at universities in Canada, France, and the United Kingdom for long periods, but in none of these three countries have I found students like ours: FFyL students have a very high sense of solidarity, a strong capacity for work, strong political skepticism, and contagious joy.

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