Enrique Pupo-Walker, Centennial Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, has died
Enrique Pupo-Walker, Centennial Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and former director of the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies, died September 25 in Nashville. He was 90.
Pupo-Walker was born in Holguin, Cuba, in 1933. He received his undergraduate degree at La Universidad de la Habana, in Cuba, in 1954, a master’s degree from Vanderbilt in 1962, and a Ph.D. in romance languages from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1966. He taught at Yale University and then at Vanderbilt University from 1969-1999, where he was promoted to Centennial Professor of Spanish and Portuguese in 1986. He was also a visiting professor at Oxford University in England, La Universidad de Salamanca in Spain, and Indiana University in Bloomington.
Pupo-Walker has an enormous influence on Latin American scholarship in the field broadly and at Vanderbilt. He was a Latin Americanist who spent nearly a decade developing the first major history of Latin American literature, The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Culminating in three volumes at nearly 600 pages each, his co-editorship of this renowned series brought numerous writers and artists to the Vanderbilt campus.
“While I did not have any personal contact with Enrique Pupo-Walker, I am aware of the tremendous impact he had on Vanderbilt University and on Latin American Studies,” said Michelle Murray, chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and associate professor of Spanish. “His legacy is extraordinary.”
Pupo-Walker ran the Vanderbilt-in-Spain program for three years in the 1970s and then directed the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies (CLAIS) from 1981 to 1993, fostering important conversations in teaching and research between Iberian and Latin American studies. Under his leadership, CLAIS was chosen as a training program for U.S. military cultural attachés bound for service in Latin America. Through the creation of international student exchange programs and hosting multi-disciplinary international conferences, Pupo-Walker reconnected the center with Latin American scholars and gave the program global visibility.
“I am fortunate to have learned about Enrique the scholar and person for many years through colleagues who esteemed him greatly,” said Celso Castilho, Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. “He once said, ‘In a sense, you might say that I discovered Latin America in the Vanderbilt Library,’ and this is one hundred percent true. We are indebted to his groundbreaking work to advance Latin American studies at the university.”
Pupo-Walker was also a very accomplished artist; his watercolors, oils, and drawings are held in more than 50 private collections in the United States, Latin America, Spain, and Great Britain.
He is survived by his daughters Yolanda Pupo-Thompson (Matthew Thompson) of North Berwick, Scotland; Gini Pupo-Walker (Eddie Wright-Ríos) of Nashville; Elizabeth Pupo-Walker of New York, New York; sister-in-law Sandy Heinrich; five grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by his wife, Bettye, whom he married at Benton Chapel on Vanderbilt’s campus in 1960, and his sister Dolores Freyre.
At his request, the family will host a private celebration of his life. Donations can be made in his honor to Cheekwood Estate and Gardens, a place that brought joy to him and Bettye, where they were members for many years, and which is blocks from the home where he raised his family.