Film Screen and Discussion

Please join us for a a film screening of Niños de la Memoria, followed by discussion with Pro-Búsqueda Executive Director Ester Alvarenga. Come learn about the continued plague that enforced disappearance has on Salvadoran society, how Pro-Búsqueda investigates and seeks to reunite children who were stolen from their families, and what role the United States and international community play in this complicated human rights issue.

Cosponsored by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS), the Department of International Studies, the Knight Law School, the Department of Political Science, and the Latin American Studies Program.

Indigenous people are disproportionately affected by climate change and natural disasters, yet they are often marginalized from policy and academic discussions. Moreover, discussion of indigenous people and climate change opens up much broader discussion about environmental epistemologies across diverse cultures, as well as environmental management, race and class dynamics, and the intersection of local, national, and global issues.

Conference Goals:

– Facilitate interaction among native and non-native communities on climate change, environmental, and cultural issues

– Increase knowledge of non-native students about climate change and indigenous peoples

– Foster discourse between indigenous leaders and students

– Put climate change and indigenous peoples issues into comparative international context (by focusing on issues throughout the Americas)

– Provide opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to present research and gain professional experience

– Expose the UO community to issues related to indigenous peoples and climate change

Research will be presented on any aspect of climate change and indigenous peoples anywhere in the Americas at this student-focused conference.  Topics may range from public perceptions of climate change, climate science, policies, climate change impacts, adaptation, mitigation, history, or traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). The goals of this conference are to promote student research, provide professional experience for students, and generate dialogue about the critical issues facing indigenous peoples related to climate change.

The problem of undocumented or “illegal” immigration is in some ways new, but in other ways is simply a new incarnation of older systems of labor control under capitalism. In every period, laws and cultural beliefs have rationalized and sustained unequal statuses that justify the super-exploitation of certain groups for their labor. This talk will explore contemporary ideologies of “illegality” and the creation of “undocumented” people in the context of the history of systems of exclusion and labor control. Aviva Chomsky is Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. Her books include Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class (2008), A History of the Cuban Revolution (2011), They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths about Immigration (2007), and The People Behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals, and Human Rights (2007). She is also co-editor of The Cuba Reader (2003) and Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean (1998). She has been active for 30 years in Latin America solidarity and immigrants rights organizations. This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, the Department of Education Studies, the Department of History, the Global Oregon initiative, the Labor Education and Research Center, and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.

David Maawad, born in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1952, has been documenting the social, cultural, and environmental impact of mining in Mexico over the course of more than thirty years with spectacular vistas of unearthly postindustrial landscapes. His black and white photographs capture the human dimensions of this economic activity with astonishing beauty, showing the resilience and strength of Mexican mine workers, but also the difficult conditions under which they perform their labor.

The works will be on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (1430 Johnson Lane, Eugene, Oregon 97403) from April 3-29, 2012. The artist will give a public talk on Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 5:30 pm in the Ford Lecture Hall at the JSMA.

After their exhibition in Eugene, the works will be moved to the White Stag Light Court Commons (70 NW Couch Street, Portland, Oregon 97209), where they will be on view from May 3–June 9, 2012.

This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of the Americas in a Globalized World Initiative; the Oregon Humanities Center Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities; the Latin American Studies Program; the Environmental Studies Program; the Center for Latino/a & Latin American Studies; the Office of International Affairs; the Global Oregon Initiative; the Department of Art History; the Department of Comparative Literature; the Department of English; the Department of Ethnic Studies; the Department of Romance Languages; Academic Affairs, Portland; the College of Arts & Sciences; and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Thursday, March 1, 2012
Browsing Room, Knight Library
7:00 PM

“Fighting Impunity in National Courts: Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Latin America.”

This talk addresses critical issues in the efforts to bring to court human rights violators in Latin America. It discusses two types of national courts litigation: first, when litigation is available in the country where the crime occurred; and second and most commonly, when litigation takes place in third country national courts (also known as universal jurisdiction). An analysis of the Alien Tort Statute in US courts and the impact of these cases in the transitional justice efforts in Latin America will be included, as well as a review of the practice and implementation of Universal Jurisdiction in Spain in relation to Latin America. Using cases from El Salvador and Guatemala, this lecture sheds light on the possibilities and challenges of using legal instruments in transnational efforts to bring justice and reparation to victims of human rights violations.

Almudena Bernabeu

Dr. Bernabeu is an International and Human Rights Attorney for the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) since 2002, where she leads its Latin America program. She currently serves as the lead private prosecutor on two human rights cases before the Spanish National Court: one filed on behalf of survivors of the Guatemalan Genocide and the other brought against senior Salvadoran officials for the massacre of Jesuit priests in 1989.

Dr. Bernabeu has published several articles on human rights litigation in national courts and its effectiveness in the struggle against impunity, as well as on reforming Spanish asylum and refugee law. Throughout the 1990s, she worked pro bono for Amnesty International-Spain and served as an investigator for the European Court for Human Rights. She was recently elected vice-president of the Spanish Association for Human Rights, serves as a board member at a US-based Human Rights organization called Equatorial Guinea Justice, and is a member of the advisory board of the Peruvian Institute of Forensic Anthropology, a forensic group providing evidence on human rights violations investigations and prosecutions.

This lecture is organized by the Latin American Studies Program and co-sponsored by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, the School of Law, the Departments of Romance Languages, Political Science, and International Studies, and the St. Thomas More Newman Center at the University of Oregon.

Charles Walker is Professor of History at UC Davis and the author or editor of several books, including Shaky Colonialism: The Earthquake – Tsunami of 1746 in Lima, Peru and its LongAftermath (Duke University Press, 2008) and Diálogos con el Perú: Ensayos de Historia (Fondo Editorial San Marcos, 2009). He is currently working on a book about the Tupac Amaru rebellion in colonial Peru.

Rosa Chávez (1980) is a Guatemalan poet of Maya K’iche’ origin. Among her books of poetry, we find Casa solitaria (2005), Piedra abaj’ (2009), El corazón de la piedra (2010), and Quitapenas (2010). She is currently studying cinema and television in Casa Comal and participates as part of the Mayan Artists’ Movement, Ri Akux Nikotzijan.

Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies of poetry throughout the United States and Latin America. She has been invited to a number of poetry readings across the Americas and Europe.

Briceida Cuevas Cob (1969) is a Mayan poet from Tepakán, Calkiní, Campeche, México. She has published several poetry books, U yok’ol awat peek’ (El quejido del perro / The dog’s moan) (1995), Je’ bix k’iin (Como el sol / Like The Sun) (1998), Ti’ u billil in nook’ (Del dobladillo de mi ropa / From My Clothes’ Hem) (2008). Her poems have been translated into French, Dutch, English and Italian. She is a founding member of the Mexican Association of Writers of Indigenous Languages.

This Fall, the Department of Philosophy will host an international conference on ETHICS IN THE AMERICAS.  The conference will be held from the 11th to the 13th of November at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.  The event will include the participation of philosophers and thinkers from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, the United States, and from Native American traditions. Among the speakers to present will be Enrique Dussel (UNAM, Mexico), Eduardo Mendieta (Philosophy Department Stony Brook University), Walter Mignolo (Duke University), Pablo Oyarzun (Chile), Ofelia Schutte (University of South Florida), Charles Scott (Vanderbilt University), and Daniel Wildcat (Haskell University). All events will be free and open to the public. A detailed program for the event will be posted on the Philosophy Department website. For further information, contact Alejandro Vallega, avallega@uoregon.edu.

The conference is co-sponsored by The Oregon Humanities Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Latin American Studies Program, the Department of International Studies, and “The Americas in a Globalized World” initiative.