Over the past weeks we are happily celebrating the 25th anniversary of our existence as the Latin American Community of Mössbauer spectroscopy. Back in 1988, with the exception of Brazil, where local Mössbauer meetings had been held biennially since 1982, across our continent at that time there were a few researchers, without much funds and with great difficulties, attempting to carry out good science in some sparse laboratories. This would change for ever when in Rio de Janeiro, from 31 October to 4 November 1988, the first Latin American Conference on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect was held. At that meeting we would know each other and soon identify ourselves as forming part of a broader Latin American Mössbauer community.

Along these twenty five years we have grown both individually and collectively. We feel ourselves as forming part of a reality that exceeds the frontiers of our countries, constituting a Latin American unity that finds great pleasure and advantage in collaborating with colleagues from other countries of the region and get together again with old friends (and not-so-old ones) each two years in the uninterrupted LACAME conferences and in frequent scientific collaborations between members of the community.

Over this period we have witnessed coming about synchrotron radiation laboratories, electron microscopy centers, the Internet. In our own institutions there exist diverse new instruments in our laboratories, like magnetometers or calorimeters, which have allowed us to greatly deepen our research. However, all this has not made us leave our conviction that Mössbauer spectroscopy is the unifying method that binds us together.

In other continents this reality is much weaker or simply does no longer exist. But in Latin America our Conferences enjoy prestige and enthusiasm with new young people joining in and feeling as well that they belong to a convening community which has attained a level of good international respect.

For this reason, the Mössbauer Spectroscopy Latin American Committee joyously greets Latin American colleagues and friends from all over the world and hopes for the new generations to succeed in their efforts to continue and improve what has been done so far.

Appendix:
1stPageAbstractsBookletLACAME88.PNG
HistoryLACAME.pdf