On November 10, 2021, Constantino Urcuyo, Academic Director of the Centro de Investigación y Adiestramiento Político Administrativo (CIAPA), sat down with Ludovico Feoli, Director of the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) in the Greenleaf Conference Room. Below you can view their entire conversation and then access a multimedia glimpse into the formation of CIAPA.
A Brief History of CIAPA
Disenchanted with university politics in Costa Rica at a turbulent political moment in Central America, Samuel Z. Stone, together with a group of colleagues at the University of Costa Rica (UCR) formulated a plan to create a new research center, the Centro de Investigación y Adiestramiento Político Administrativo (CIAPA). It was to be a private, not-for-profit, non-partisan academic think tank forged in collaboration with the government of Costa Rica, to modernize the state through courses and seminars steeped in the social sciences. It was also to be in partnership with a U.S. academic institution to facilitate financial support from North American donors and to provide additional credentials to the members of its staff and faculty. The founders were intent on creating a pluralistic space welcoming all perspectives. At the height of the Cold War and its deep ideological polarization this was essential but also extremely challenging.
“The whole idea was to put those ideologies together and analyze what was going on in Costa Rica at that time.”
– Constantino Urcuyo
Among the founders were scholars on the left, like Rodolfo Cerdas, whose father established the Communist Party in Costa Rica, and on the right, like Jaime Daremblum, a conservative who would many years later become Costa Rican ambassador to the United States. Both chaired the political science department at the UCR, as did Stone, and also Constantino Urcuyo, who joined CIAPA a decade later.
After an unsuccessful approach to William Glade at the University of Texas at Austin in November 1974, Stone pitched a partnership to Richard Greenleaf at Tulane University. A review committee approved the project, and an agreement was signed on March 18, 1975. An application for funding was presented to the Zemurray Foundation, which approved an initial two-year grant. The Stone Center pledged to “administer the Institute…assisted by an Executive Committee” while the Director of the Institute, Dr. Stone, “would be responsible to the Board of Trustees of Tulane and Costa Rican personnel.”1 The Institute’s offices were inaugurated by Costa Rican President Daniel Oduber on April 23, 1976 , with Munro Edmonson and Richard Greenleaf in attendance on behalf of Tulane.
The partnership produced several initiatives including an annual Central American Conference on the climate for investment celebrated in New Orleans between 1976 and 1980, as well as a Tulane summer program hosted by CIAPA in Costa Rica.
CIAPA strove for financial independence through a combination of tuition revenue, government support, and third-party funding. As this process advanced, the relationship with Tulane lost intensity and shifted to an affiliated status. The growing geostrategic importance of Costa Rica amidst the revolutionary unrest engulfing the Central American region in the late 1970s and early 1980s brought about a significant influx of funding from USAID and other agencies. CIAPA’s research mission, focused on finding solutions to questions of political and economic development, and building state capabilities, together with its established reputation as a pluralistic, non-partisan space, made it an attractive prospect for funding by those programs as well as other private sources. It received financial resources to acquire land, build a small campus, and start an endowment, while securing its non-partisanship, autonomy, and independence.
This empowered it to convene academics, politicians, diplomats, and other practitioners to ponder the key questions of their time regarding regional political and economic development. CIAPA became a place where thought leaders could gather and argue without inhibitions, knowing they were part of a genuine intellectual effort to analyze, explain, and transmit what was happening in the region.
Despite having achieved greater financial and administrative independence, it was insufficient to provide CIAPA with full autonomy. This was for two reasons. First, USAID established its endowment in local currency (despite CIAPA’s emphatic opposition) in a context of high and sustained devaluation. This meant that the real value of the endowment continuously declined. Second, CIAPA’s financial obligations increased with its faculty’s seniority, and arrangements had to be made for a retirement program. The maintenance of the new facilities also added to the rise in costs. This led Sam Stone to rethink the center’s affiliation with Tulane. The relationship had continued over the years, generating student exchanges and periodic visits from faculty and administrators. A Costa Rican graduate of the Stone Center, Luis Guillermo Solis, who returned to work as a researcher at CIAPA and taught courses for Tulane study abroad programs, went on to become president of Costa Rica in 2014. But Stone wanted to leverage the relationship with Tulane in ways that could bolster CIAPA’s credentials and access to funding. He approached Richard Greenleaf and President Eamon Kelly with a proposal to merge CIAPA with Tulane.
After a protracted negotiation an agreement was proposed in 1993 wherein CIAPA would become part of the Center for Latin American Studies as one of its research and training departments. CIAPA’s director and faculty would report to the director of the Center for Latin American Studies and, through that channel, to the provost of Tulane University.
He rejected the agreement, instead turning to private foundations to secure an equivalent amount of Funding ($6M) to create an independent endowment, the CIAPA Support Trust. He also relied on private sources to create a retirement fund for CIAPA’s founders and long-term employees. While this temporarily solved the financing issue, however, it left CIAPA without a creditable institutional affiliation. After his retirement, he delegated the task of rebuilding the relationship with Tulane to Ludovico Feoli.
A series of international conferences, seminars, and study abroad programs were conducted jointly with the Stone Center starting in 2000, with the enthusiastic support of Greenleaf’s successor, Tom Reese. Tulane scholars spent research leaves at CIAPA and vice versa. Eventually, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2009 to bring CIAPA’s research mission to Tulane through the creation of the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR).
“CIAPA had a clear mission, to advance original research… but it didn’t havae a formula, an institutional mechanism to renew itself… it feel to us to define a succession mechanism.”
– Ludovico Feoli
While remaining faithful to Sam Stone’s vision for CIAPA, the new Center sought to avoid the challenges he faced with a permanent faculty, which included issues related to research productivity and stasis, by adopting a research fellowship model, complemented with affiliations from Tulane faculty. The CIAPA Support Trust was converted into the Samuel Z. Stone CIPR Support Trust, in honor of its founder (who passed away in 2006).
Under its current form, funding from the Support Trust will enable CIPR to sustain a community of researchers in perpetuity, with one- to two-year fellowships for pre-, post-doctoral, mid-career, and senior scholars. CIAPA will continue to be administered through CIPR as part of Tulane’s International Programs. The 2009 MOU was renewed in 2023 and includes a plan to ensure CIAPA’s long-term financial sustainability through divestiture of its campus and facilities. Under this plan, CIAPA will be able to support continuing research replicating CIPR’s fellowship model and will remain part of Tulane’s international programs.
In 2024 CIPR launched the Central American Politics Consortium to bring together scholars of political science, sociology, and other related social sciences, and to promote scholarly exchange, as well as policy- and public-facing work on Central America’s contemporary political, social, and economic dynamics. CIAPA will play an important role in this initiative, which echoes its original mission, established jointly with Tulane almost fifty years ago.
Text: Ludovico Feoli, PhD
Executive Director of CIPR
Images: Emma Kainz
PhD Candidate, Linguistics
April 2024