NYU CLACS co-sponsored an event at Hunter College to celebrate the Spanish translation of a new biography of Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Bolivian President Evo Morales’s story has inspired millions of people around the world. He is a man who grew up herding llamas in the Bolivian mountains, who became the national leader of the Coca Farmers Union, who successfully led a peasant struggle against the privatization of water, and who became the first indigenous president of a country with an indigenous majority.
President Morales visited Hunter College to celebrate the English version publication of a book that tells that very story. “Evo Morales: The Extraordinary Rise of The First Indigenous President of Bolivia,” by Argentine journalist Martin Sivak, is the product of Sivak’s two-year stint following President Morales around Bolivia and all over the world. During that time, Sivak had unprecedented access to President Morales’ personal and public life. He was with him at meetings with other heads of state, at marches, summits, public speeches, and small gatherings in Bolivia. Martin Sivak is currently a PhD student at NYU.
During the last two weeks of my time in Santiago, my research on Chile’s Memory and Human Rights Museum has covered some exciting, new ground. Interviews with key Museum players – specifically those who have participated in the collection of Museum objects and images – have uncovered a new layer of political complexity, while informal meetings with local researchers has introduced me to a still-emerging set of public debates regarding both the functioning of this institution and its political significance in post-dictatorship Chile.
