Arnold J. Bauer—Arnie to just about everyone—passed away on July 30, 2015, after a sudden case of meningitis. He left a huge community of friends and family who valued his sense of humor, passion for conversation, and loyalty. He contributed to Latin American history through wide-ranging and engaging publications and his work as a teacher and mentor in the United States and Chile.
Arnie grew up on a farm in northeast Kansas, the subject of his acclaimed memoir, Time’s Shadow: Remembering a Family Farm in Kansas (2012). The question of how people worked the land, organized themselves, and related to broader society underlay much of his work. The US Air Force took him to Morocco in 1953, sparking an interest in travel and language and a distrust of US Cold War rhetoric and policies. The GI Bill allowed him to study in Mexico (at what became the Universidad de las Ame´ricas), the beginning of his fascination with Latin America (1). After several years of unsatisfying work as a salesman and bohemian life in San Francisco (he held a cocktail party to celebrate the Cuban Revolution), he entered graduate school at UC Berkeley in 1964. (He was initially turned down but talked his way in with the aid of James King.) He fell in love with Chile when conducting research there, a romance that continued to the end of his life. He taught at UC Davis from 1970 until retirement in 2005 and ran the University of California program in Santiago, Chile, for five years.