The University of Arizona Press

November 13, 2024

Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly and Rural Development in Mexico, by Stephanie Baker Opperman, delves into distinct facets of Kelly’s international journey, with a particular emphasis on her involvement in cooperative programs aimed at fostering diplomatic relations with Mexico. Through this narrative framework, readers are immersed in a compelling exploration of Dr. Isabel T. Kelly’s (1906-1983) enduring impact on both the field of anthropology and the realm of international diplomacy.

This book is indispensable for historians, anthropologists, and individuals intrigued by the nuanced complexities of Cold War politics, presenting pioneering research at the intersection of history and anthropology. Opperman skillfully brings to light the previously untold narratives of Isabel Kelly, unveiling her influence on mid-twentieth-century Mexico. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.

In March 1952, Dr. Isabel Kelly attended the tenth annual meeting of the United States–Mexico Border Public Health Association (USMBPHA) in the northern Mexican state of Monterrey. The Pan American Sanitary Bureau (PASB) helped to establish the association “in order to foster understanding of public health needs and through mutual assistance to promote public and personal health along the United States– Mexico border.” The wartime alliance, however, did not easily transfer into postwar solidarity among health officials in the region. The meeting’s attendees included PASB director Fred Soper and secretary general Miguel Bustamante; USMBPHA president Wilton L. Halverson and secretary J. C. Ellington; U.S. health officers from the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas; Mexican health officers from the states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, Sonora, and Tamaulipas; and “federal representatives of the health services of Mexico and of the United States.” Kelly served as a U.S. delegate to the meeting on behalf of the Smithsonian’s Institute of Social Anthropology (ISA). Beginning in 1943, the ISA established a series of cooperative agreements with the Mexican government to expand social science research in the country.

In summarizing her experience to her supervisors in Washington, D.C., Kelly acknowledged an air of tension that permeated the meetings. She commented, “It was clearly evident that the rapport between the representatives of the two nations was neither very close nor very warm.” Rather than working together to resolve common health problems along the border, she identified a “direct competition” between representatives as each side prioritized their own initiatives while giving less consideration to that of their counterparts. Many of the U.S. delegates could not understand Spanish and therefore, according to Kelly, felt “no obligation to sit through a paper in a foreign tongue.” They also expressed frustration that the Mexican representatives did not adhere to presentation time limits set by the organizing committee. Mexican delegates, in turn, voiced their exasperation with the association for designing the event without seeking their input on topics, formatting, or other cultural considerations. Kelly concluded that “far from fostering cordial relations between the two countries, it seems to have fostered a feeling of rivalry and to have intensified the local national inferiority complex. Under the circumstances, the meeting probably did more harm than good.”

Kelly’s report points to larger tensions within mid-twentieth-century relations between the two countries. After World War II, U.S. foreign policymakers attempted to exert “hegemonic influence through expertise.” State officials offered to educate their international counterparts in public health, industrial development, and modernization practices through development projects that aligned with U.S. culture. Arturo Escobar argues, “Development fostered a way of conceiving of social life as a technical problem.” Consequently, U.S. officials approached foreign relations from a position of authority, believing their technical knowledge to be superior to non-U.S. intellectuals. Rather than establishing reciprocal relationships with foreign diplomats, U.S. officials followed a top-down model of engagement. In contrast, Mexican officials hoped to shift postwar diplomatic dialogues away from U.S. exceptionalism toward a more inclusive approach that valued the technical knowledge and contributions of Mexicans and, more broadly, Latin Americans. As Kelly’s notes exemplify, the contradictions between these two styles of diplomacy resulted in heightened animosity between the representatives and consequently limited opportunities for collaboration.

Whereas other scholars focus on Kelly’s career as an archaeologist or briefly note her role on a particular anthropological project, the depth and breadth of her international work remains largely untouched. Yet her extensive experiences in Mexico in the decades immediately following World War II, as well as brief assignments in Bolivia and Pakistan, offer a distinct perspective on the changing nature of the relationship between anthropologists and technical cooperation programs during the Cold War. They highlight Kelly’s intentional efforts to combat professional gender bias and to amplify women’s voices in community studies. And they demonstrate the significant role that anthropology played in politicizing modernization programs aimed at assimilation. Although anthropologists working in rural areas spoke directly with community members to learn more about their health and economic needs, the data they collected confirmed for politicians a general call for state intervention. Consequently, decisions regarding project programming, funding, and desired outcomes were based almost entirely on the agendas of state, national, and international leaders rather than on the expressed needs of the local citizens.

Isabel Kelly’s international work grew out of her well-established career as an anthropologist and archaeologist in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. She was born in Santa Cruz, California, in 1906 and raised in a nurturing household that encouraged independence and intellectual thought. Both she and her younger sister, Evelyn, attended the University of California, Berkeley. Isabel graduated with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1926 and remained at the school to pursue graduate study. She worked with some of the biggest names in the field, including Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, Edward W. Gifford, and Carl O. Sauer, while researching her master’s thesis on northwestern California Indian art. After spending a summer conducting fieldwork with archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder in New Mexico’s Pecos Pueblo, she completed her own doctoral research on the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. She earned her PhD in anthropology with a dissertation on the “Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture” in 1932. After graduation, she received funding from the National Research Council to conduct research among the Southern Paiute as a counterpart to her work on the Northern Paiute. While in the field, however, she received word that Kroeber and Sauer nominated her to lead an archaeological project in Sinaloa, Mexico. She moved to Mexico in 1935 to oversee the initial excavation of Sinaloa’s Culiacán and Chametla sites. After returning to the United States to lead Gila Pueblo’s excavations of the Hodges site, a Hohokam village in Tucson, Arizona, she again found her way to Mexico to continue working on excavations in Sinaloa, Jalisco, Colima, and Nayarit. She also expanded her reputation among intellectual circles in this period by publishing several research papers in academic journals and edited volumes.

This impressive list of accomplishments, particularly by a woman in what was still a male-dominated field, emphasizes Kelly’s determination to continuously learn and lead in anthropological and archaeological circles. Her strong nature, however, was not universally enjoyed. Marian E. Cummings, a photographer hired by Kroeber to accompany Kelly on an assignment in Jalisco, left the project early due to Kelly’s “constant complaining and bad disposition.” Kroeber, responding to Cummings’s resignation, wrote, “I am sure you will agree with me when I say that these unreasonable tensions in Isabel are the counterpart of the dynamic energy which causes her to be so grand and successful a scientist. Add the fact that she is over thirty, unmarried, and has never had a permanent job, and I think the psychology is understandable.” This quote is indicative of the prejudice against single, independent professional women during this period. Kelly regularly faced opposition to her strong will and staunch work ethic, even among her female collaborators. Regardless of how she came across to her colleagues, Kelly loved her work and became increasingly attracted to Mexico as a place to combine her passion for archaeological exploration and ethnographic fieldwork. She moved to the country permanently in 1939.

Nancy J. Parezo argues that contrary to the common belief that anthropology has historically been more open to women scholars than other fields, the influence of gender on power relations ensured that women have not always been treated as equals to their male counterparts. While many women “were determined that they be judged on the basis of their talents and merit alone,” they could not ignore the gender dynamics that kept them subservient to male leaders in the field. For her part, Kelly routinely pushed back against this norm, using correspondence, social occasions, and official reports to challenge her treatment as a female professional. She vocalized her dissatisfaction with often being mistaken for a diplomatic wife rather than a professional and advocated for more opportunities to work in the field as well as the classroom. She also encouraged young Mexican women to pursue degrees in anthropology and often hired her best female students to serve as her research assistants. All of these examples point to an intentional effort at capacity building for women who traditionally stayed home to provide domestic care for their families.

Kelly’s gendered experiences are also evident in her personal life. She maintained a close relationship with Bertha Harris, a U.S. librarian and cultural liaison who moved to Mexico City in 1941. Together, the two women worked, traveled, and shared a home that they co-designed on the outskirts of Mexico City. They were invited to events as a couple and hosted several parties of their own. These public expressions of their connectedness undoubtedly influenced how their U.S. and Mexican colleagues treated them, and after Bertha’s unexpected death in 1949, Kelly increasingly withdrew from public functions and social engagements. Instead, she focused all of her attention on work. Her research interests gradually shifted to follow the trajectory of women’s lives, from midwifery, curanderas, and maternal and child health to household dynamics, motherhood, and educational opportunities for working mothers. She recognized that she and her female students gained access to more domestic spaces than their male counterparts and utilized this advantage to learn more about the experiences, needs, and contributions of women in both domestic and community settings. She leveraged her position to document and record ideas related to morality, tradition, progress, and modernity as seen through the eyes of rural families. And her research clarified many discrepancies between official programming and individual interests as she found ways to bring women’s voices to the forefront of social welfare programs.