April 24-25, 2014, CSUSB
Guest Speakers
Dr. Miguel Tinker-Salas
Pomona College (Department of Latin American Studies and Department of History)
Latin American Contending Views for the Future
Since the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998, Latin America has experienced dramatic political and social change. In nearly every country, Latin Americans voted into office social democratic or left candidates, dramatically changing the political map of the region and demanding new relations with Washington. The change is most obvious in the creation of regional institutions that do not include the United States such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). This talk will address the process of change that has been underway, the promise it holds, and the challenges it faces after almost two decades in power.
Jaider Esbell
Makuxi indigenous artist from Brazil Indigenous Peoples and Contemporary Art
The World as a Common Place
Auto-biographical reflection of Jaider's artistic trajectory as it informs and is informed by the recent history of the Macuxi people of the Northern Brazilian Amazon. The Macuxi territory was invaded by cattle ranchers in the 20th century and the Macuxi were forced into becoming cowboys and maids for the ranches; but they reversed that historical predicament later by becoming cattle owners and using the tool of conquest as the tool of liberation. The success of the Macuxi political movement in the last three decades was due to the ability of the leaders to build a wide range of political support, from the Catholic Church to International Human Rights organizations. Communication in different languages and forms, and the inherit necessity to distill and translate to different contexts the sorrows and the aspirations of the Macuxi was crucial to the political, cultural and physical survival of the people. Jaider's artistic work builds on and pushes the boundaries of this tradition, born from the colonial experience. He uses poetry, prose, paintings, and community projects to discuss contemporary ideas on the environment, on belonging and on inequalities; concerns that are not particular to the Macuxi but are diffused globally. Will Indigenous peoples have a space, a voice in those global discourses?
Dr. Alicia del Campo
CSU Long Beach (Department of Romance, German and Russian)
Occupying the Neoliberal City: The Chile Student Movement
In May 2011 the Chile student movement initiates a new form of political protest that uses art and theater as fundamental tools for resistance in the public space expressing a profound discontent with the Neoliberal model imposed in Chile. In its public demonstrations the student movement has been able to articulate a counter hegemonic discourse aiming to unmask the image of Chile as the Latin American neoliberal miracle and exposing the inequities that has created. At the core of their critique is the transformation of public education, a fundamental pillar of the Modernization project, into a masked “for profit” enterprise that perpetuates already existent social inequities. Demanding free and high quality public education the movement has inaugurated a new form of resistance where performance, social theatricalities, flash mobs and streets marches have been at the core of their successful appeal to the society as a whole and key to their sustainability as social movement. This presentation aims to show the diverse forms of social theatricalities, performance, and demonstrations at work, their effective use of media culture, their creative ways of symbolic appropriation of the public space and the new forms of political participation that make them possible.