Marysa Navarro-Aranguren, the trailblazing Charles A. and Elfriede A. Collis professor emerita in history, passed away at age 90 on March 2. She is remembered as a “proud Basque,” “strongly opinionated and outspoken” and for her “laughter,” according to an obituary written by her daughter, Nina Gerassi-Navarro.
At Dartmouth, Navarro-Aranguren supported programs to diversify academia. She founded and chaired the Women’s Studies Program, which has since become the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, and was the first of its kind in the Ivy League. She chaired the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies Program — which has recently become a department. She also supported the creation of a Native American and Indigenous Studies program at the College.
Navarro-Aranguren was born in Pamplona, Spain, in 1934, according to the obituary. Her father was a “staunch Republican” during the Spanish Civil War, and as Nationalist forces advanced, two-year old Navarro-Aranguren fled to France with her family.
While in France, Navarro-Aranguren’s father educated her. She spent several summers crossing the Pyrenees Mountain Range by herself to take equivalency exams in Spain, according to the obituary. During this time, her sister Dora was living in a Soviet refugee camp. When the family was reunited in 1948, they moved to Uruguay for Navarro-Aranguren’s education.
After graduating from college in Uruguay, Navarro-Aranguren came to the United States and earned a Ph.D from Columbia University. After graduating, she taught at Rutgers University, Yeshiva University, Kean College and Long Island University.
In 1968, Navarro-Aranguren joined Dartmouth, where she was the first woman to go through the typical four-year tenure process. She became a full professor in the history department, where she taught courses about Latin American history, with a particular focus on Brazilian and Argentinian history.
When she arrived at the College, although there were fewer people from Spanish-speaking backgrounds than there are today, she was “full force” about using Spanish words in class, her daughter told The Dartmouth.
“She was very proud of who she was and of what she had done to get where she was, and didn’t want to forget that,” Gerassi-Navarro said.
Navarro-Aranguren also arrived at the College at a time when the student body was still all male. She became one of the “leading voices” advocating for coeducation, according to her former student George Reid Andrews ’72. The College became fully coeducational in 1972, four years after Navarro-Aranguren arrived.
Gene Garthwaite, professor emeritus of history, said Navarro-Aranguren was “critical” in ensuring women were brought onto Dartmouth’s campus itself, rather than onto a separate women’s college. She maintained a sense of humor about the process, he added.
“She had a bet with [then-College] President [John] Kemeny about coeducation: when coeducation was finally developed, she would be happy to run around the Green in a football uniform in celebration,” Garthwaite said. “And she did.”
In the classroom, Navarro-Aranguren was a “dynamic, engaged professor” and a mentor to many students, according to former student and visiting professor of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies Peter DeShazo ’72.
DeShazo became engaged in the study of Latin American history through Navarro-Aranguren’s classes. He later studied in Chile and completed a Ph.D in Latin American history, and said that he was one of many students shaped by Navarro-Aranguren’s courses.
Navarro-Aranguren hosted many students at her home for dinner, which always involved Spanish recipes, and she stayed in touch with some former students for more than 40 years, her daughter said. Garthwaite fondly praised the Spanish food that Navarro-Aranguren loved to prepare.
“The potato tortilla that she made is to die for,” Garthwaite said.
Navarro-Aranguren also served as associate dean for the social sciences from 1985 to 1989, during which time she built “the economics department that you see today,” according to Garthwaite.
Loren M. Berry professor of economics Alan Gustman told The Dartmouth that Navarro-Aranguren ended a “misguided policy” of not paying identical salaries by department, rather than adjusting for market salaries.
“[Her policy] had an immediate effect on [the economics department’s] ability to recruit and eventually started the department on the track of being the top level economics department in the country it is today,” Gustman wrote.
In 1982, Navarro-Aranguren wrote what DeShazo called the “standard” biography on Eva Perón, former first lady of Argentina. She also served as president of the New England Council for Latin American Studies, as well as the Latin American Studies Association, according to the obituary by Gerassi-Navarro. After retiring as a Dartmouth professor in 2010, she was a permanent resident scholar at Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Navarro-Aranguren’s life work grew from her belief that “everybody who was a part of society deserves to be studied and supported,” according to Garthwaite.
Garthwaite said Navarro-Aranguren was a “self-professed lapsed Roman Catholic” who held onto and was inspired by elements of Catholic theology that advocate support for marginalized people.
After retiring from her teaching position at Dartmouth, Navarro-Aranguren worked on research concerning the history of the Spanish Civil War and the experience of her family, for which she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Pamplona, according to Gerassi-Navarro. Navarro-Aranguren also spent more time with her grandchildren.
“We went to the different cities that she had lived in in France, which was very moving for her,” Gerassi-Navarro said. At the time of the trip, Gerassi-Navarro’s children, 10 and five, were the same ages Navarro-Aranguren was when she lived in those cities as a refugee.
She is survived by her daughter Nina Gerassi-Navarro, her son-in-law Ernesto Livon-Grosman and her grandchildren Nicolás and Natalia Livon-Navarro.
Jackson Hyde '28 is an intended philosophy major from Los Angeles, California. His interests include photography, meditation, and board game design.
