As a region at the heart of the emergence of modern imperialism and colonialism, Latin America has been historically and intrinsically shaped by unequal power relations in terms of class, gender, race, culture, and international location. Conflicts generated by these unequal relations have thus been played in multiple arenas of domination, contestation, and negotiation involving a wide variety of social actors, institutions, and issues. While the specific contours of power struggles in the region shifted according to particular historical contexts, they undoubtedly inform the current dynamics of contemporary Latin American societies and help explain the fact that Latin America is currently the most unequal region in the world.
Established in 2007, the goal of the Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America is to foster dialogue among members, graduate and undergraduate students, and the wider community on the varied nature and multiple aspects of power relations in Latin America. The scholars who form this interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research cluster are motivated by their shared research and teaching interest on different aspects of those themes. Its members, affiliated with the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg, and Brandon University, represent a broad range of disciplines, including Anthropology, History, Literature and Spanish, Indigenous Studies, and Aboriginal, Community Health and Family Social Sciences. Since its creation, it has organized and co-sponsored research presentations, guest lectures and workshops involving cluster members and local, national, and international scholars and students, hosted film projections and discussions, and opened a space for the presentation by activists and NGO’s currently working in Latin America.
Contact Person: Dr Jorge Nallim (History) nallimja@cc.umanitoba.ca
CLUSTER EVENTS IN WINTER TERM 2012:
(The Cluster's public programs are now finished for the academic year 2011-12. Thanks to everyone who participated!)
NEW APPROACHES TO EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY BRAZIL
"Continuing Professional Development in Digital Learning Communities: The Experience of Brazilian Educators"
a talk by
Maysa Bueno
"Training the Educators: A Look at Seniors"
a talk by
Barbara Chieregati
Tuesday, March 20th
2:30 pm
409 Tier
This event brought together two visiting Brazilian graduate students from the Dom Bosco Catholic University (Campo Grande, Brazil) who are at the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Human Ecology under the 'Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program' (ELAP), and they will present their work on education in contemporary Brazil. Maysa Bueno, a PhD candidate in Education, discussed her research on teachers/professors professional development through their participation indigital learning communities and networks, in the context of the Brazilian ovenment investment in educational technological infrastructure. Barbara Chieragati, a MA candidate in Education, discussed her research on continuing education programs for seniors in relation to the challenges posed by an aging population who is still able to participate actively in society.
"Activism and Filmmaking in Argentina between Dictatorship and Democracy, 1968-2004"
a talk by Dr. Jessica Stites Mor (University of British Columbia, Okanagan)
Tuesday, March 6th
2:30 pm
307 Tier Building
"STRENGTHENING NURSING PRACTICE IN CUBA THROUGH EDUCATION & RESEARCH"
by Judith Scanlan, RN, PhD
Faculty of Nursing
University of Manitoba
Tuesday, January 24th
2:30 pm
409 Tier Building
Judith Scanlan is Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Nursing. She was the Canadian project director of a multi-year (2004-2011), Tier 2 CIDA collaborative project in Cuba. The project, carried out in cooperation with Cuban institutions and organizations, sought to address the challenges faced by Cuban nurses regarding their professional development, education, and participation in health care delivery. In her presentation, Dr. Scanlan will provide an overview of the project with an emphasis on its outcomes as well as challenges during implementation.
"Policing the U.S.-Mexico Border and Beyond:
The Militarization of U.S. Immigration Enforcement"
a talk by Todd Miller (North American Congress on Latin America) (NACLA)
Tuesday, February 7th
2:30 pm
409 Tier Building
Todd Miller has researched and written about U.S.-Mexico border issues for more than 10 years, and he is currently working on a book on immigration and border enforcement. He has worked on both sides of the border for NACLA, Witness for Peace, and BorderLinks. In his presentation, he will discuss how the wars on immigration, drugs, and "terror" all meet up in vivid detail in the U.S. Mexico borderlands, with their cumulative force aimed at the migrants who continually cross into the United States without authorization in the context of vast structural disparities. This war on migrants happens not only in the borderlands but also along the "virtual border" that follows them wherever they go in the United States and that increasingly extends beyond U.S. shores.
The Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Brandon University's Gender and Women's Studies Program
in making this event possible.
CLUSTER EVENTS FALL 2011:
The Department of French, Spanish & Italian,
the Institute for the Humanities, and
the Interdisciplinary Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America presented:
“THE COCA COLA CASE: FILMMAKING, PARAMILITARIES, AND UNIONS IN COLOMBIA”
by Germán Gutiérrez
Independent Filmmaker
Friday, November 4th
2:30 pm
409 Tier
Germán Gutiérrez is an independent filmmaker who has focused on social and political issues. He has directed more than twenty films and has also collaborated on a number of television series. He is the director of “The Coca Cola Case,” a documentary film about Coke and labour rights in the bottling plants that present a searing indictment of the Coca-Cola empire and its alleged kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders trying to improve working conditions in Colombia, Guatemala and Turkey. The filmmakers follow labour rights lawyers Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth and an activist for the Stop Killer-Coke! Campaign, Ray Rogers, as they attempt to hold the giant U.S. multinational beverage company accountable in this legal and human rights battle. In this presentation, Gutiérrez presented the film and discussed it with the audience.
“THE COCA COLA CASE”
Film projection and discussion led by director Germán Gutiérrez
Millennium Library (251 Donald Street)
Buchwald Room (2nd Floor)
Wednesday, November 2nd
5:30 pm
Germán Gutiérrez is an independent filmmaker who has focused on social and political issues. He has directed more than twenty films and has also collaborated on a number of television series. He is the director of “The Coca Cola Case,” a documentary film about Coke and labour rights in the bottling plants that present a searing indictment of the Coca-Cola empire and its alleged kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders trying to improve working conditions in Colombia, Guatemala and Turkey. In this event, the projection of the documentary will be followed by a discussion with director Gutiérrez.
This presentation was sponsored by the Department of French, Spanish & Italian, the Institute for the Humanities, and the Interdisciplinary Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America.
“Eyewitness to Earthquake: Reconstruction in Haiti”
a talk by Roger Annis
(Canada Haiti Action Network Vancouver)
Monday, September 26th
2:30 pm
409 Tier
Roger Annis, a coordinator of the Canada Haiti Action Network in Vancouver, was the director of the ten-day fact-finding and solidarity mission to Haiti in late June. The delegation, organized by Haiti Solidarity BC, the Vancouver affiliate of the Canada Haiti Action Network, traveled throughout the region that was shattered by the January 12, 2010 earthquake, including Port au Prince, Corail, Léogâne and Jacmel. Based on their findings and reports, this presentation discussed the shortcomings of reconstruction in an uncertain political environment as well as the important efforts by international service providers, relief workers, organized labor, and peasant and women’s rights organizations in charting a course forward for the country despite the difficulties they face.
The Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America expresses its gratitude to the Canada Haiti Action Network and the Winnipeg-Haiti Solidarity Group for making this event possible.
Past Cluster Events
( Fall/Winter 2010-11)Indigenous Peoples and the Developmental State in Contemporary Brazil
Neimar Machado de Sousa
Universidade Católica Dom Bosco (Mato Groso do Sul, Brazil)
Dr. Machado de Sousa is a Brazilian sociologist who specializes on Indigenous issues and education in Brazil. Currently a professor and researcher at the Universidade Católica Dom Bosco (UCDB, Mato Groso do Sul, Brazil), he is also the Director of the UCDB's Center for the Study of the Indigenous Population and a high ranking member of the Brazilian Catholic Church Commission on Indigenous Peoples (CIMI).
The Institute for the Humanities and
The Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America
Present
Institute for Social Sciences and the Media Studies School
University of Costa Rica
The Many Lives of Global Development: China-Africa and Peru:
cosponsored by the International Research Circle on Globalization and Cosmopolitanism and
the Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America
Monday March 7th, 2011
1:00-2:15pm
Jamie Monson (Macalester College)
"The TAZARA Railway from Socialism to Liberalization: Technology Transfer and the Construction of a Worker Generation"
Jamie Monson is Professor of History at Macalester College. Her research has focused on agricultural and environmental history of Tanzania, anti-colonial warfare in German East Africa, and Chinese development aid in Tanzania and Zambia. She is the author of Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania (2009).
2:15-2:30pm Break
2:30-3:45pm
José Antonio Lucero (University of Washington)
"Extracting Culture: Extractive Industries and Indigenous Movements in Peru"
José Antonio Lucero is Associate Professor and Chair of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. His research focuses on comparative politics, social movements, and indigenous groups in Latin America. He is the author of Struggles of Voice: The Politics of Indigenous Representation in the Andes (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008) and editor of Beyond the Lost Decade: Indigenous Movements, Democracy, and Development in Latin America (Princeton University, Program in Latin American Studies, 2003).
Sponsors: The Institute for the Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Graduate Studies, History Department, Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, and Political Studies Department.
_
"Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Social Movements, and Science in Peru"
by Dr Fabiana Li
(Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba)
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
Fabiana Li is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. Her research focuses on conflicts over resource extraction in Latin America and related controversies over pollution, water scarcity, community rights, and corporate accountability. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Peru and Chile, focusing on changing forms of politics, mining technologies, and contested understandings of the environment.
______________________________
a public talk by
Dr. Jacqueline Romanow
Department of Indigenous Studies
University of Winnipeg
Friday, January 28th, 2011
Dr. Jacqueline Romanow is professor and researcher at the University of Winnipeg’s Department of Indigenous Studies, where she teaches courses in human rights, indigenous rights and aboriginal politics. She has worked extensively with indigenous communities in Canada as well as Latin America in the fields of property rights, economic development and self-government.
______________________________
a public talk by
Dr. Annemieke Farenhorst
Department of Soil Science
University of Manitoba
Friday, January 21st, 2011
Dr. Annemieke Farenhorst’ research interests include fate processes of pesticides and estrogens in soil, water and air; chemical transport modeling; and environmental and public health. She has on-going research collaborations in Latin America with scientists and their students at universities in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua. Dr. Farenhorst and her Canadian collaborators--Laura Sims, David Lobb and Martin Entz-- received the 2010 University of Manitoba Outreach Award for their extensive outreach activities associated with the project Community-based Pest Management in Central American Agriculture. Dr. Farenhorst’s presentation will discuss the human and environmental health problems created by pesticide use in Central America, highlighting some of the successes gained in improving pest control practices in communities of Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua.
______________________________
Technology, Education, and New Literacies in Theory and Practice: Studies from Brazil
Dom Bosco Catholic University
Dr. Roseanne R. Tavares
Federal University of Alagoas
Luiz Henrique Magnani
Universidade de São Paulo
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
This event brings together a group of visiting Brazilian scholars at UofM’s Faculty of Human Ecology and the Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies, who will present on their shared research interests in education, technology, and critical literacies. Dr. Paniago Lopes is professor at the Dom Bosco Catholic University’s Education Post-Graduation Programme and leader of the Group of Research and Studies about Educational Technology and Distance Eduation (GETED) registered at Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). Dr.Tavares is professor at the Federal University of Alagoas’s Language Postgraduate Program, director of the research group “Observatory of language in use,” and research member of the national project on literacies and multi-literacies in Brazil. Luiz Magnani is a PhD researcher at the Universidade de São Paulo, whose research focuses on the relationship between video games, meaning-making, and critical literacy.
Videos of the individual presentations can be viewed online through the links to
each speaker's name, above. Thank you to Dr Diana Brydon (Canada Research Chair,
Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies) for sharing these links.
______________________________
Contesting Power: New Orientations in Latin American History
Friday, November 5, 2010
The UMIH Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America is pleased to present this one-day symposium on Latin American history, which celebrates Timothy Anna’s distinguished career of over forty years at the University of Manitoba’s Department of History.
Dr Anna not only built a reputation as a collegial and committed colleague at UofM, his scholarship has also been widely recognized in the field of Latin American history as his path-breaking research on colonial and early-national Mexico and Peru influenced a generation of scholars.
Program:
Panel 1
9:00-10:30 am - Gender, Culture, and Representations
Patricia Harms (Brandon University): "Gendering Guatemalan History"
Jorge Nállim (University of Manitoba): “Symbolic Power Struggles: Ideological Appropriations and Anti-Peronism in Argentina, 1946-1955”
Kelly Saxberg (Independent Filmmaker): "Putting Research on Film"
Break: 10:30-10:45
Panel 2
10:45-12:15 pm - Ethnicity, Class, and Power
Mark Meuwese (University of Winnipeg): "Unsettling Spanish Peru: Alliances between the Mapuche and the Dutch in Seventeenth-Century Chile"
Jason Yaremko (University of Winnipeg): “'Contrato de Sangre' ('Contract of Blood'): Continuity, Change, and Persistence in Colonial Indigenous Labour Forms and Elite Strategies in Nineteenth-Century Cuba”
Ronald Harpelle (Lakehead University): “Facing Foreigners: Labour, Ethnicity and Space in a United Fruit Enclave”
Karl Koth (University of Manitoba): "Tupac Katari, Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara and Evo Morales: The Four Horsemen of the Bolivian Constitutional Apocalypse. But Who Rides the White Stallion?"
Lunch break: 12:15-1:30 pm
Remarks and Keynote Address: 1:30-3:00 pm
Mark Gabbert (Head, Department of History, University of Manitoba)
Timothy Anna
Keynote Presentation:
Jim Handy (University of Saskatchewan): "So What's Different About Latin America? Land, Labour and Capitalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Latin America"
Past Cluster Events 2009- 2010
“Women, Poverty, and Social Policy in Contemporary Brazil,”
a public talk by Dr Neuma Figueiredo de Aguiar
(Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Tuesday, March 23rd
2:30 pm
409 Tier Building
Dr. Neuma Figueiredo de Aguiar is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She holds degrees from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and Boston University, and two Ph.D. degrees from Washington University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She specializes in gender, development, and women movements in Brazil. Dr. Figueiredo de Aguiar’s distinguished academic career was recognized by the Brazilian Sociology Association, who awarded her the prestigious Florestan Fernandes prize for her contributions to the development of sociology in Brazil.
The Research Cluster gratefully acknowledges the generous collaboration of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID), the Faculty of Human Ecology, the Department of History, and the Office for International Relations for making this event possible.
The Institute for the Humanities Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America presents:
“Masculinities and Intimacies: Performance and Negotiation in a
Transnational Tourist Town in Caribbean Costa Rica,”
a public talk by Kristofer Maksymowicz (Department of Anthropology).
Thursday, March 4th
2:30 pm
409 Tier Building
A Master’s student in the Department of Anthropology, Kristofer Maksymowicz recently conducted ethnographic fieldwork on Western/Northern masculinities in a transnational tourist town located on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. He will present his research on the expression and embodiment of such masculinities in the context of touristic intimacies, in particular, the role of homosociality in the production of masculine and sexual subjectivities that occur in Western/Northern men’s intimate relationships with local women.
"Human Thinking about an Illicit Nation: Panamanian State Formation, U.S. Empire, and Illegality across the Isthmus"
Matthew Scalenna
(State University of New York-Stony Brook)
Thursday, February 11th
12:30 pm
409 Tier Building
Matthew Scalena is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the State University of New York-Stony Brook. A native of Winnipeg, he has recently returned from sojourns in Vancouver (MA, Simon Fraser University) and New York, via Panama and Washington D.C., to work on his dissertation. His presentation will be based on this project that focuses on the relationship between smuggling and other transnational illegal “flows” passing across the Isthmus of Panama and the tandem early twentieth-century developments of Panamanian state formation and U.S. empire building. Everyone is welcome to attend this talk.
“Democracy for Whom?: The United States and Latin America
in John Pilger’s The War On Democracy”
Monday, February 1st
2:30 pm
409 Tier Building
This event will consist of the projection and discussion of The War on Democracy, a 2007 award-winning documentary directed by John Pilger. Based on a wide range of interviews and archival footage, it explores the nature and history of US intervention in Latin America in the twentieth-century and its role in the overthrow of democratic movements and governments. Pilger’s inclusion of the latest developments in countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela brings to discussion questions regarding social movements, popular resistance to imperialism, and the basis for the construction of a genuine democracy. Everyone is welcome to attend.
The UMIH Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America presents Two Research Talks
“The Influence of English Language in the Socio-Economic and Political Development of Contemporary Cuba”
Dania Yudith Suárez Abreu
Universidad de Ciego de Ávila (Cuba)
and
“A Case Study of the Brazilian Centre for Agrarian Reform (NERA)”
Janaina Francisca de Souza Campos
Sao Paulo State University (UNESP)
Dania Yudith Suárez Abreu and Janaina Francisca de Souza Campos are graduate students who have been awarded scholarships from the Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program (ELAP), a federal program aimed at supporting the development of human capital in the Americas and strengthening linkages between Canadian and Latin American and Caribbean universities. In this shared presentation, they will present their ongoing research that they are carrying out as part of their current affiliation with UofM’s Faculty of Human Ecology.
Friday November 27th
2:30 pm
409 Tier Building
"To be Disappeared Twice: Human Rights Commission of El Salvador and the Archival Imperative"
A public research talk by Graham Stinnett
(U of M History Department-Archival Program)
A graduate student at the Department of History’s Archival Program, Graham Stinnett recently curated the exhibit “To Remember Spain: The Winnipeg Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy” for the University of Manitoba’s Archives and Special Collections. He will present his research on the importance of records and records creators from human rights non-governmental organizations. Based on his work on the Comisión de Derechos Humanos de El Salvador (San Salvador) and the Resource Center of the Americas (Minneapolis), he will discuss the role of the archivist as activist and active participant in social change through the inclusion of marginalized voices that can inform the larger dialogue of people’s history.
Monday November 16th
2:30 pm
409 Tier Building
"Civil Society and Popular Resistance to Military Coup in Honduras"
A public talk by Grahame Russell (Rights Action)
Grahame Russell is a non-practising lawyer (University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law) and global human rights and development activist. For over 10 years, Grahame lived in Mexico and Central America, working with grassroots organizations and NGOs on environment, development and human rights issues. Since 1995, Grahame is co-director of Rights Action (http://www.rightsaction.org/) that raises funds for community-controlled development, environment and human rights projects in Guatemala and Honduras, as well as in Chiapas, El Salvador and Oaxaca; and that carries out education and activism work in the USA and Canada related to global human rights, environmental and development issues.
Tuesday, October 27th
2:30 pm
409 Tier
The Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America gratefully acknowledges the support of Rights Action, the Global Political Economy Program, and the University of Winnipeg’s Aboriginal Governance Program and Politics Department in making this event possible.
"Masculinities in an Age of Conquest"
A public talk by Dr Asuncion Lavrin
Dr Asuncion Lavrin is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. The author of numerous articles and chapters, she has published four books on gender in Latin America. Her most recent work, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (2008), won the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, John McGann Award for Outstanding Book of 2008. Her current research focuses on notions of masculinity within male religious communities of the colonial era in New Spain.
Thursday October 1st
2:30 pm
Room 409 Tier Building
The Research Cluster on Power and Resistance in Latin America gratefully acknowledges the support of the Brandon University History Department and Gender and Women's Studies Program in making this event possible.