Saddened immensely to learn of Joe's demise, I append this nomination I wrote some two years or so ago as a tribute to a dear friend, lively colleague, and sterling scholar of Latin America. Rest in peace, mi querido José:

Esteemed Members of the Conference of Latin American Geography Honors Committee:

I write to nominate Dr. Joseph L. Scarpaci for CLAG’s Preston E. James Eminent Career Award. In compliance with CLAG Honors terms of reference, I have attached a copy of Joe’s curriculum vitae to my covering email, the better for you to judge his diverse, noteworthy, and sustained merits for yourselves.

Some fifteen years or so ago I had occasion to write on Joe’s behalf for CLAG’s Carl O. Sauer Distinguished Scholarship Award, which was bestowed on him in 2004. Since then – hence that key word “sustained” in the sentence above – Joe has kept up his prolific productivity and gone, if anything, from strength to strength. This he has done not only with respect to scholarly research and professional service (among many other posts, he was JLAG’s book-review editor for a ten-year spell) but also most impressively in relation to pedagogy, championing the cause of the Latin American country he perhaps loves best – Cuba. A champion of Cuba? Given the parlous state of U.S.-Cuba relations, this is most certainly not an easy undertaking for any American to take on, but is one that Joe has committed himself to in outstanding fashion. To date, Joe has led close to one hundred educational tours to the country, for the past decade as the resourceful executive director of the Center for Study of Cuban Culture + Economy.

How did all this happen? To recap: Joe’s career trajectory spans two overlapping periods and research foci, punctuated throughout by an eclectic curiosity that sees him try his hand, most innovatively, at all sorts of artistic as well as scholarly endeavors. Stage 1 evolved naturally from his 1985 doctoral thesis on “Accessibility to Medical Care in Chile,” which earned him the Association of American Geographers Jacques M. May Dissertation Prize, and ran to the mid-1990s. Joe’s scholarly scrutiny back then for the most part was related to health care delivery and the interface between medicine and social science. Stage 2, discernible since the early 1990s and running to the present, has witnessed him develop an interest more explicitly in urban and social geography, concentrating on issues related to heritage and globalization, with a spatial shift in his inquiries from South America to the Caribbean, Cuba foremost of all. Over the past thirty years, Joe has written, co-authored, or edited eleven well-received books, along with some 45 book chapters and over 50 articles in scholarly journals, not to mention scores of reviews and encyclopedia entries. His passion for Latin America and all things Latin American has seen Joe log up a decade or more of residency in the region.

Regarding Cuba in particular, anyone who has tried to work there in any capacity, or to take students on field trips to the island, well knows how just challenging, exhausting, and frustrating that can be – but also how immensely rewarding. Joe's Cuban sojourns have not only resulted in acclaim for himself – his co-authored Havana: Two Faces of the Antillean Metropolis (2002) was a Choice Outstanding Book selection and won the Lingua Franca Academic Excellence Award – but have inspired generations of students and legions of aficionados cubanos to follow in his tenacious footsteps.

Furthemore, Joe is blessed with a creative mind and a penchant for dogged political activism. These traits have see him push the formal boundaries of academe by writing and directing plays, film scripts, and video projects – and participating in radio broadcasts, whether as a presenter himself or as the person whose expertise is sought in an interview. His involvement in producing the documentary film, Soy Cubana (2016), about the lives and work of an Afro-Cuban a capella choir, bore fruit with prize-winning kudos at several reputable film festivals, internationally in Australia and Spain besides national film fora throughout the United States, from Portland to St. Louis, from Santa Barbara to New Orleans. Hats off!

It is with the above in mind that I offer this nomination of Dr. Joseph L. Scarpaci for your consideration as a worthy and deserving recipient of CLAG’S Preston E. James Eminent Career Award.

W. George Lovell