CLACS is excited to participate as a co-organizer for a film series titled “Indocumentales / Undocumentaries: The US-Mexico Interdependent Film Series.” In collaboration with Cinema Tropical and what moves you?, CLACS will the series aims to broaden the scope of the discussion around immigration, opening up dialogue on related themes, providing additional teaching resources to interested organizations and schools, and incorporating diverse voices in this discussion. The series is will first open in New York City, and will soon travel to destinations across the United States.
Visit the Indocumentales website
Read a blog entry about a recent screening posted by Alison Bowen, CLACS GloJo alum, posted on the Latin American News Dispatch (LAND)
After being in Colombia for two weeks and having some bad luck trying to find anything that resembles a bike race, I finally made it to local race on Sunday that ended in the town of La Union. The bike race, aptly named “The Second Annual, Let’s Eat Lunch in the Park”, ended in La Union’s main plaza with a sancocho lunch for 1,000 people. To be honest I’ve never seen a bike race quite like this one. It featured pro racers, men over the 60 and kids as young as 12 all racing on the same route. While there were different classifications for the riders, it was tough to tell who was who and who actually won what classification. Add to that the fact that roads the race was held on was open to traffic and things got a bit dicey.
I have spent four weeks in Colombia, and my work is going well. I have collected some bibliography that I hope will be very useful for my dissertation proposal. It includes some literary criticism about the authors I intend to study, about literature and violence in Colombia, and about the Colombian armed conflict. After months of making contact with the organizations that work with victims, I have finally had a breakthrough. I was allowed to search an archive from the Comisión Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación, containing interviews with war victims. I started today and I hope to find some interesting testimonies and to get a broader picture of what the commission is doing. I had an interview with Ayda Martínez, a journalist that works for the CNRR and is in charge of “La hora de las víctimas”, a radio program dedicated to the victims and the process of justice and redress. It was very interesting talking to her, because she has traveled throughout the country with the CNRR, interviewing victims, and she says that despite the concerns for their security many victims are actually willing to be recognized and made visible. They don’t want to remain anonymous, as one might expect. Ayda Martínez told me today about two CNRR projects for collecting testimonies in Barranquilla, on the Atlantic Coast, and Bucaramanga, in the north-eastern region of Colombia. In Barranquilla, written testimonies are being collected, while in Bucaramanga, there is an exhibit of letters addressed by victims to their missing loved ones. I’m planning to contact the CNRR in those cities and, if my schedule and my budget allow it, I would like to visit those archives.
Hours within landing in Puerto Rico I get an email from one of my contacts saying there is a panel on Puerto Rican Muslims happening that night close to where my cousin goes to school. Shocked at my luck I quickly got ready and made my way over there and met both of the contacts I had made while still in the states my first day here. I came during an interesting time to the island: the University of Puerto Rico student strike has affected many, even preventing high school students from completing this year due to their schools’ affiliation with the University. Also going on are the Central American and Caribbean Games this year located in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. It is interesting to see the combination of festivities and strikes.
Over the past two weeks, I have developed a better understanding of contemporary divisions among murga troupes in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires based on interviews and interactions with murgueros in Cachengue y Sudor. One major point of differentiation is whether troupes participate in the “official” Carnival sponsored by the Comisión de Carnaval (Carnival Committee) of the government of Buenos Aires or the “unofficial” Carnival organized by the Movimiento de Murgas Independientes (Movement of Independent Murgas). The Comisión de Carnaval was created in 1997 when the city government declared Carnival activities and associations as cultural patrimony and passed an ordinance which committed financial resources to support murga troupes and Carnival festivities. This significant step forward in reviving Carnival was spurred in large part due to the mobilization – including protest marches calling for the re-establishment of Carnival as an official holiday (which was eliminated by the military dictatorship of 1978-1983) – of both younger and older murgueros in Buenos Aires.
Everyday I ruffle plastic overalls over my jeans when whisperings of rain saturate our senses and afternoon water darkens the clouds. Our rides can be long, bumpy and wonderfully gritty; occasionally I daydream I’ve made it to the final tryout for an international development/microfinance biker gang. Granted, I’m not actually driving, I wear the cheapest and therefore least-macho rain suit available, and internally complain when my lower half goes numb after 30 minutes, but John Fogerty seems to continually rasp me into bigger and bigger ideas as I realize coach has essentially put me in and I’m ready to play.
I came to the 
It’s hard to be a Latin Americanist without a hyperawareness of the systematic gutting Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced at the hands of Europe, and later the United States. The region has endured inconceivable losses in natural resources, wealth, cultural autonomy, and most tragically, life. Through 500 years of colonization and imperialism, both in war time and in “peace,” there have been countless attempts on the part of the oppressed to fight for their liberation. These represent some of the most exciting moments in Latin American history, when ordinary people gain a sense of confidence in what they can accomplish by organizing and uniting in collective action.
I have spent almost two weeks in Colombia. Although I have encountered some obstacles—my luggage did not arrive with me and there was an episode of food poisoning that took me out of business for a few days—it has been a very fruitful trip. My purpose for the month and a half that I will spend doing research here is primarily to collect bibliography for my dissertation proposal. I have previous research experience in autobiography and in literature. This is the first time that I work on Colombia, my native country, and the first time that I work with a textual corpus that is not exclusively literary. I want to study autobiographical narratives related to the experience of violence in Colombia. I am planning to analyze some novels, but I also want to include some pieces of testimony. That is what I have been looking for here. I am consulting the catalog at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango (BLAA) for written testimonies, critical bibliography about the literary pieces I will study, and general studies about the phenomenon of violence in Colombia. There, I found some very interesting texts that I expect to use during the elaboration of my proposal and later in the dissertation itself. I have also contacted some organizations aimed to provide aid to the victims of the armed conflict and to promote justice. So far, this has been the hardest part of my research. Either because they do not deal with the collection of testimonial materials or, I guess, because of fear, victims’ organizations have been rather reluctant to cooperate.
