"I had a little trouble all the time. I remember when the vice-dean for political activity met me in the corridor in Celetná in the 1980s and I wore my hair long to my shoulders, he shouted across the whole corridor how something like me could teach our socialist youth. About a month later, the head of the department summoned me. He told me that he had received a complaint in his mailbox from conscious ethnography students that Dr. (not Comrade) Kašpar's lectures were non-Marxist and educationally damaging to the youth. I was already searching my mind for the boiler room I might end up in, and he looked at me, asked what I was saying about it, and then tore it up and threw it in the trash. But he could take the liberty to do it. Another manager might have shit himself in fear and fired me. But he was confident, so no one dared to question him."
"One time my teachers made a big mistake when they sent me to a national competition in Nitra, where I quoted a study on the Aztecs by Jacques Soustell, a prominent anthropologist who also studied the Aztecs. And an associate professor stood up there and started shouting how is this possible, that he studies something like this in our universities and dares to quote that fascist Soustell. I, in the arrogance of my youth, still declared that I did not agree with the associate professor, but I would not argue with him. The next morning, my two teachers who accompanied me there came in completely green, their eyes sunken in, they just wheezed and said that I caused them quite some troubles. I learned that they must have spent the whole night with the associate professor in question and must have gotten him so drunk that he forgot everything, because he was proposing my expulsion."
"Horror. I was at my parents' house for the holidays. There we had an attic room where we slept only spring to autumn, because there was no heating yet. And on the twenty-first of August, someone was shaking me, my mother was standing over me and shouting: 'Wake up, there's a war on!' And I heard this strange noise, and I looked out of the attic window, and there were Soviet tanks driving on the road across the village. That road was completely devastated for several years before they fixed it again."
Oldřich Kašpar was born on 6 January 1952 in the village of Jestřebí near Zábřeh in Moravia. He and his brother Zdeněk were interested in history from childhood, which eventually became their profession. Already in the second grade of primary school, Oldřich Kašpar decided to study the Aztecs, which he later devoted himself to scientifically. As a teenager, he was emotionally affected by the political turn of many high school teachers after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. Because his parents were not in the party, he got into the Faculty of Education at Palacký University in Olomouc, partly thanks to the good will of the teachers and his excellent exam results. After university he moved to Prague, where he devoted himself to theoretical studies of Mexican Indians and lecturing at the Faculty of Ethnography and Folklore. It was not until six years later that he got into the field, where his many years of field research on Mexican Indians began. His scholarly work was complicated by his nonpartisan affiliation, his inability to publish, and complaints from some students about his non-Marxist views. During his travels abroad, he found himself in danger many times, experiencing the American invasion of Grenada and the armed conflicts during the Zapatista uprising in the Chiapas region. He participated with his students in demonstrations during the Velvet Revolution. In 2003, after the conflict at the Prague department, he left to teach at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pardubice. He and his first wife raised their sons Jan and Vít. In 2023 he lived in Prague.
Oldřich Kašpar with Spanish colleagues, researchers from the Archives of the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid (Archivo de Real Jardín Botánico). During the presentation of a bilingual book (Czech-Spanish) about overseas discoveries and their response in the Czech lands. On the right, Dr. María Victoria Ibáñez, Spanish researcher, author of a major book on the Czech native Tadeáš Haenke (1985)
Oldřich Kašpar with Spanish colleagues, researchers from the Archives of the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid (Archivo de Real Jardín Botánico). During the presentation of a bilingual book (Czech-Spanish) about overseas discoveries and their response in the Czech lands. On the right, Dr. María Victoria Ibáñez, Spanish researcher, author of a major book on the Czech native Tadeáš Haenke (1985)
Oldřich Kašpar (far left) after a lecture at the Mexican Academy of History (Mexicana Academia de la Historia) with academics in 2002. Here he was awarded the title of full academician of this institution
Oldřich Kašpar (far left) after a lecture at the Mexican Academy of History (Mexicana Academia de la Historia) with academics in 2002. Here he was awarded the title of full academician of this institution
Oldřich Kašpar (in the background) with Dr. Bohumil Zavadil (in the middle) and Cuban colleagues during a study stay in Havana in 1983. Next to Dr. Zavadil stands a man in glasses, Dr. Enrique Sosa Rodríguez, a Cuban expert on Afro-Caribbean cults. Standing next to Olřich Kašpar is Dr. Isabel Fernández Santana, director of the Biblioteca Nacional in Havana
Oldřich Kašpar (in the background) with Dr. Bohumil Zavadil (in the middle) and Cuban colleagues during a study stay in Havana in 1983. Next to Dr. Zavadil stands a man in glasses, Dr. Enrique Sosa Rodríguez, a Cuban expert on Afro-Caribbean cults. Standing next to Olřich Kašpar is Dr. Isabel Fernández Santana, director of the Biblioteca Nacional in Havana
